COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH 


THE  AUTHORSHIP 
OF   TIMON   OF  ATHENS 


THE   AUTHORSHIP 


OF 


TIMON   OF  ATHENS 


BY 


ERNEST  HUNTER  WRIGHT,  Ph.D. 


iffa  iork 

THE  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

1910 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,   1910 
By  The  Columhia  University  Press 

Printed  from  type  May,  1910 


Press  of 

The  new  Era  printins  company 

Lancaster.  Pa. 


LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  01-  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  liAUUARA 


This  Monograph  has  been  approved  by  the  Department  of  Eng- 
lish in  Columbia  University  as  a  contribution  to  knowledge  worthy 

of  publication. 

A.  H.  THORNDIKE, 

Secretary. 


PREFACE 

Considered  with  regard  to  its  corrupted  text,  its  indetermi- 
nate date,  its  undiscovered  history,  its  disputed  sources  and  more 
seriously  disputed  authorship,  its  dubious  relation  to  the  rest 
of  Shakspere's  work,  its  lapses  from  the  excellent  to  the 
commonplace  in  style  and  in  dramatic  sense,  and  from  the 
regular  to  the  eccentric  in  technical  form,  its  no  less  singular 
disparities  and  contradictions  in  substance  and  in  treatment,  its 
apparent  breaches  and  apparent  patches,  serious  enough  to 
leave  its  plot  unsatisfactory  and  its  meaning  somewhat  clouded, 
— taken  with  regard  to  all  these  and  yet  other  well-known 
problems  which  it  raises,  Timon  of  Athens  presents  a  collec- 
tion of  enigmas  as  perplexing  and  as  numerous  as  any  play 
in  the  Shaksperean  canon  offers.  We  estimate  the  date  of 
Timon  only  from  its  style  and  content.  We  know  nothing  of 
its  history  except  that  it  was  printed  in  the  Folio  and  for  more 
than  fifty  years  was  never  mentioned  otherwise  in  any  writing 
known.  We  have  no  evidence  that  it  was  acted  during  Shaks- 
pere's life,  or  in  his  century.  We  are  not  certain  whether  its 
main  source  was  a  Greek  dialogue  or  an  English  comedy.  As 
for  its  authorship,  most  recent  critics  hold  that  Timon  is  the 
product  of  two  dramatists;  but  hardly  two  authorities  agree 
entirely  as  to  the  passages  each  dramatist  contributed ;  and 
nearly  half  the  critics  think  that  Shakspere  partially  rewrote 
the  other  author's  play,  while  rather  more  than  half  believe 
the  other  dramatist  interpolated  Shakspere's.  Though  we 
have  good  reason  to  believe  that  Timon  had  two  authors,  we 
have  yet  no  sure  division  of  their  work;  and  on  the  question 
as  to  which  of  them  originally  wrote  the  play,  and  which  re- 
shaped it  into  the  peculiar  form  in  which  we  know  it,  we  have 
two  theories  point  to  point  contradictory.  Neither  theory 
explains  quite  all  of  the  peculiar  features  of  the  form  in  which 
the  play  is  extant.  If  we  set  aside  corruptions  as  the  printer's 
work,  if  we  also  allow  the  presence  of  two  authors  to  account 
for  great  disparities  in  style,  we  have  still  divergences  in  pur- 
pose and  in  treatment,  inconsistencies  in  plot  and  substance, 
direct  contradictions  in  characters  and  names  and  other  actual 


facts,  so  curious  that  one  wouKl  haiilly  think  two  autliors 
working  separately  woiiUl  have  olTcctoil  tlicin;  and  sonic  of 
these  have  never  been  cxi^laincd.  or  are  explained  in  ways 
that  do  not  quite  appeal  to  reason. 

For  it  must  be  saiil  that  criticism  has  been  rather  languid 
in  the  case  of  Timoti.  Attention  may  have  been  dellccted  by 
the  seeming  hopelessness  of  the  problem,  or  attracted  by  the 
importance  of  problems  elsewhere ;  at  any  rate,  the  bibli- 
ography of  Timon  is  surprisingly  small.  Many  have  repeated 
or  refuted  what  a  few  have  said ;  the  treatises  significant  alike 
for  size  and  sanity  and  independence  can  be  counted  on  the 
fingers  of  one  hand.  No  study  of  the  problem  has  been  printed 
that  can  properly  be  called  exhaustive;  and  the  latest  of  the 
few  most  nearly  answering  that  description  is  now  thirty-five 
years  old.  These  facts  are  my  apology  for  sifting  all  the  evi- 
dence anew  and  seeking  to  increase  it  in  such  measure  that  it 
may  suffice  for  a  division  of  the  play  between  the  authors  and 
a  theory  of  their  relations  to  each  other;  and  in  this  problem 
all  the  other  problems  of  the  play  are  found  involved. 

Meagre  as  the  bibliography  of  Timon  is,  I  have  not  worked 
upon  the  play  without  incurring  heavy  debts  to  predecessors. 
All  these  I  have  sought  to  mention  in  the  text;  and  especially 
I  would  here  acknowledge  my  peculiar  debt  to  one  preceding 
writer.  The  name  of  the  late  Mr.  F.  G.  Fleay  occurs  at  many 
points  in  succeeding  pages  where  I  have  presumed  to  disagree 
with  him;  but  I  should  not  like  to  omit  a  statement  that  at 
many  others  I  was  fortunate  in  the  opportunity  to  follow  in 
his  lead,  whether  by  adopting  his  conclusions  or  developing 
my  own  from  his  suggestions.  Of  those  with  whom  I  have 
had  the  privilege  of  personal  conference  about  my  work,  I 
would  mention  Professor  William  W.  Lawrence,  Professor 
Jefferson  B.  Fletcher,  and  Professor  William  P.  Trent,  to  all 
of  whom  I  owe  thanks  for  reviewing  my  manuscript  and  for 
offering  helpful  criticism.  My  special  thanks  are  also  due  to 
Professor  Ashley  H.  Thorndike,  who,  among  his  many  kind- 
nesses to  me,  first  suggested  my  work  on  the  present  problem, 
and  reviewed  and  criticized  it  at  several  stages  of  its  develop- 
ment, as  well  as  in  its  final  form. 

Oxford,  1909.  Ernest  Hunter  Wright. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER     I.     The  Problems  i 

CHAPTER    11.     The  Sources 8 

CHAPTER  HI.     A  Division  of  Authorship 24 

CHAPTER  IV.     Shakspere's  Priority   58 

CHAPTER    V.     Shakspere's  Plot 82 


THE  AUTHORSHIP  OF  TIM  ON  OF  ATHENS 

CHAPTER  I 

The  Problems 

It  was  sixty-two  years  after  Shakspere's  death  when  Thomas 
Shadwell  set  about  improving  Timon  of  Athens,  and  thus  gave 
us,  incidentally,  the  first  external  reference  to  the  play.  Mean- 
while Timon  had  been  printed  in  the  First,  and  copied  in  the 
Second  and  Third  Folios ;  and  nothing  further  has  been  found 
recorded  of  its  history  up  to  1678. 

In  the  Folio  the  play  shows  marked  peculiarities.  The  acts 
and  scenes  are  not  divided.  Corruptions  of  the  text  are  fre- 
quent. The  printing,  regular  enough  in  certain  scenes,  in 
others  is  unusually  eccentric.  Patches  of  verse,  and  sometimes 
even  riming  verse,  are  printed  frequently  as  prose;  and  still 
more  frequently  pure  prose  is  set  up  to  look  as  much  as  possi- 
ble like  verse.  Nor  does  the  printer  seem  entirely  to  blame, 
since  modern  editors  are  at  a  loss  to  say  just  what  is  meant 
for  verse  and  what  for  prose  at  many  points  in  the  play. 
Taking  only  what  is  surely  verse,  however,  critics  find  its 
technic  strangely  varied.  In  some  scenes  the  verse  is  regular, 
in  others  it  is  curiously  irregular;  some  scenes  are  wholly  or 
comparatively  free  from  rime,  others  are  full  of  it;  some,  in 
a  word,  are  written  in  a  technic  very  like  Shakspere's  in  his 
later  tragic  period,  while  others  show  a  technic  very  unlike 
his  at  any  period.  And  still  more  striking,  at  first  sight,  is 
the  unevenness  of  Timon  in  artistic  quality.  Scenes  freighted 
with  the  thought,  nervous  with  the  passion,  and  glowing  with 
the  imagery  of  Shakspere's  great  moments,  stand  side  by  side 
with  scenes  so  trivial,  tame,  and  uninspired  as  long  since  to  have 
raised  the  question  whether  Shakspere  had  anything  to  do 
with  them.  Nor  does  the  contrast  happen  once  or  twice,  but 
2  1 


many  times;  aiul  not  i>iily  hotwi-cii  diiTcicMit  scenes,  but  often 
in  two  parts  of  the  same  one.  In  brief,  about  a  third  oi  Tii)ioii 
— merely  to  state  concisely  the  prevailing  view  of  criticism — 
is  such  jMDetry  as  one  scarcely  finds  outside  of  Shakspcre ; 
another  thinl,  in  prose  and  verse,  might  easily  be  matched  in 
Shakspcre.  but  also  in  some  tUher  dramatists;  while  the  last 
third  is  stutT  such  as  Shakspcre  seldom  or  never  wrote  in 
cpiantity. 

Xor  are  these  all  the  singularities  of  the  play.  The  charac- 
ters are  often  inconsistent.  The  hero,  for  example,  breaks 
down  into  elaborate  foolery  at  one  of  his  gravest  moments. 
Persons,  and  sometimes  persons  who  would  seem  to  be  im- 
portant, come  into  one  scene  unexpectedly,  disappear  thereafter, 
and  remain  enigmas.  At  one  place  a  character  appears  in  a 
stage-direction  but  not  in  the  scene  it  introduces.  At  another, 
persons  are  announced  who  never  enter.  At  a  third,  persons 
are  said  to  be  about  to  enter  who  do  not  come  on  until  three 
scenes  later.  Characters  start  ofT  the  stage  and  unexpectedly 
come  back.  Names  get  mixed.  A's  name  in  the  second  scene 
is  transferred  in  the  fourth  to  B.  Thereafter  A  goes  name- 
less ;  but  B  discards  A's  name  and  takes  still  another.  C  is  one 
man  in  scenes  two,  four,  six,  and  seven,  but  such  a  different 
man  in  scene  eight  that  one  cannot  tell  whether  he  is  still  the 
same  C,  or,  as  is  usually  thought,  an  unknown  D  acting  under. 
C's  name.  In  one  place  a  thread  of  plot  is  made  to  lead  up 
carefully  to  a  climactic  scene — and  then  the  scene  is  left  out. 
In  another,  a  strategic  scene  is  put  in  without  any  thread  of 
plot  to  lead  up  to  it  and  explain  it.  The  whole  plot  is  there- 
fore none  too  continuous.  It  begins,  halts,  starts  again,  skips, 
gets  twisted,  takes  on  new  motives,  and  comes  finally  to  a 
somewhat  unnatural  end. 

All  these  anomalies  and  others  will  find  ample  illustration  as 
we  progress.  Some  of  them  were  not  unnoticed  by  the  early 
editors.  Not  only  did  Timon  demand  the  unusual  amount  of 
textual  emendation  it  received  from  Theobald,  Hanmer,  War- 
burton,  Johnson,  Steevens,  Alalone,  and  others ;  the  singular 
contrasts  in  its  style,  and  the  contradictions  and  ellipses  in  its 
plot,  so  far  as  they  w^ere  noted,  called  for  explanation.     Thus 


when  Johnson  saw  a  poet  and  a  painter  announced  as  on  the 
point  of  entering  in  one  scene  but  not  actually  arriving  until 
three  scenes  later,  he  thought  "  it  might  be  suspected  that  some 
scenes  were  transposed  " ;  though  he  discovered  that  they  could 
in  no  way  be  rearranged.^  And  when  he  found  a  page  and  a 
fool  chatting  glibly  of  the  letters  they  are  bringing  from  their 
mistresses  to  Timon  and  to  Alcibiades — said  page  and  fool, 
however,  never  in  the  least  divulging  who  they  or  their  mis- 
tresses may  be,  or  what  the  letters  may  contain — he  imagined 
that  some  scene  had  been  lost  which  would  have  introduced 
them  and  explained  their  dialogue.-  "  It  is  well  known,"  says 
Johnson  in  a  sentence  that  sums  up  his  explanation  of  the  irreg- 
ularities of  the  play,  "  that  the  players  often  shorten  speeches 
to  quicken  the  representation ;  and  it  may  be  suspected  that 
they  sometimes  performed  their  amputations  with  more  haste 
than  judgment."^  Amputations,  corruptions,  transpositions 
were  held  throughout  the  eighteenth  century  to  explain  the 
peculiarities  of  the  play ;  and  were  imputed  to  players,  copy- 
ists, printers,  or  editors.  Thus  Steevens  voiced  an  opinion 
current  with  the  critics  of  his  time  in  saying  that  many 
passages  "  were  irretrievably  corrupted  by  transcribers  or 
printers,  and  could  not  have  proceeded,  in  their  present  state, 
from  the  pen  of  Shakspere."*  Yet  no  one  in  the  century 
doubted  that  the  play,  however  mangled,  was  entirely  Shaks- 
pere's  work;  and  the  generation  of  Coleridge  and  Schlegel, 
while  likewise  acknowledging  corruptions,  saw  his  hand  in  it 
throughout. 

No  theory  of  dual  authorship  appeared  until  1838.  In  that 
year,  Charles  Knight  put  forth  an  argument'^  that  Tinion  was 
originally  written  by  "  a  very  inferior  dramatist  " ;  that  Shak- 
spere  rewrote  somewhat  more  than  half  the  play — mainly 
those  parts  of  it  in  which  the  interest  centers  in  the  hero's 
character — but  left  a  little  less  than  half  of  it  untouched;  thus 
causing  the  disparities  and  contradictions.  The  argument  of 
Knight  was  fairly  brief;  it  left  out  of  account  a  large  part  of 

^  Note  to  V,  i,   I.  =  Note  to  II,  ii,  47. 

'Note  to  I,   i,  25.  ■'Note  to  V,  ii,  8. 

^Pictorial  Edition,   1838. 


the  evidence  at  liatul ;  it  was  more  sufjgcstivf  than  conclusive. 
The  theory  it  started  is  therefore  much  hetter  represented  in 
the  more  exhaustive  arj^ument  wliich  DoHus"  wrote  in  1867. 
To  the  huter  argument  nothing  lias  heen  added  since ;  the 
treatise  of  Dehus  has  remained  the  only  full  expression  of 
the  theory  that  Shakspere  partially  re\vn>te  an  older  Tinioii. 
Staunton.  Dyce.  Messrs.  Clark  and  Wright,  Dr.  P)rinslcy 
Nicholson.  Mr.  II.  .\.  Kvans.^  and  others,  have  followed 
Knight  ami  Dclius  with  slight  deviations  but  without  further 
pr'>if. 

In  general,  the  evidence  adduced  by  Knight  and  Delius 
came  much  nearer  proving  that  there  were  two  hands  at  work 
in  Timoii  than  that  Shakspcre's  was  the  second.  The  way 
was  therefore  open  for  the  rival  theory  which  \^crplanck^ 
started  by  interpreting  the  evidence  to  show  that  Shakspere 
wrote  the  original  play  and  that  another  man  reworked  it  into 
the  incongruous  shape  in  which  we  have  it.  The  argument 
of  \'erplanck,  though  well  put,  is  again  superficial ;  and  for 
the  best  expression  of  this  theory  we  go  (passing  the  elabo- 
rate defence  of  it  by  Tschischwitz"  as  largely  guesswork)  to 
!Mr.  Fleay.^°  With  that  scholar's  work  in  the  Timon  problem 
— as  in  so  many  of  the  darker  corners  of  Elizabethan  dra- 
matic history — we  reach  the  locus  classicus  of  criticism  on 
the  subject.  To  be  sure,  the  argument  of  Mr.  Fleay  is  weak- 
ened here  and  there  by  an  incautious  guess,  an  assumption 
hardly  warranted,  a  hasty  conclusion,  or  a  logical  slip ;  but  it 
shows  far  fewer  of  such  eccentricities  than  are  sometimes 
present  in  its  author's  work,  and  it  is  on  the  whole  perhaps 
as  brilliant  an  example  as  Mr.  Fleay  has  ever  given  of  his 
peculiar  critical  acumen.  It  is  a  valiant  argument  that  Shaks- 
pcre's was  the  first  hand  to  touch  Timon.  One  cannot  say  that 
!Mr.  Fleay  concludes  the  case;  he  does  not,  even  for  his  main 

* Jahrbuch   der   deutschen    Shakespeare    Gesellschaft ,    1867. 
^  See    the     respective     editions,     and,     for     Nicholson,     New    Shakspere 
Society   Transactions,    1874,  page  249. 

*  Edition,    1847. 

*  Jahrbucit,   1869. 

^  New   Shakspere   Society    Transactions,    1874. 


contention  of  Shakspere's  priority,  furnish  final  proof.  Never- 
theless he  said,  as  did  Delius  on  the  other  side,  almost  the 
last  word  that  has  been  said  for  that  contention,  and  he 
turned  the  course  of  most  of  the  subsequent  speculation  on 
the  subject.  Not  all  the  later  critics  have  been  ready  to  ac- 
cept his  argument  as  wholly  plausible,  and  many  who  do 
accept  his  chief  thesis  of  Shakspere's  priority  still  disagree 
with  him  and  with  each  other  as  to  dozens  of  subsidiary  ques- 
tions. Yet  the  greater  number  of  the  critics — Messrs.  Furni- 
vall,  Hudson,  Rolfe,  Herford,  Deighton,  Gollancz,^^  and 
others — have  at  least  concurred  in  favoring  the  central  theory 
of  Mr.  Fleay  that  Shakspere  was  the  first  of  the  two  authors 
in  the  play. 

Here  we  have  the  kernels  only  of  the  two  main  theories. 
Shakspere  first  or  Shakspere  last — the  reviser  of  an  older 
Timon  or  the  writer  of  a  Timon  which  another  man  revised 
— these  are  the  standards  around  which  the  two  schools  of 
recent  critics  respectively  rally.  The  many  minor  questions 
on  which  each  school  disagrees,  within  itself  and  with  the 
other,  may  be  left  to  the  succeeding  pages.  The  arguments 
here  grouped  under  the  two  schools,  with  one  or  two  sporadic 
theories,^-  comprise  all  of  importance  that  has  been  written  on 
our  problem.  The  older  theory  was  complete  with  Delius  in 
1867,  the  newer  with  Mr.  Fleay  in  1874.  Each  has  been  vir- 
tually static  since.  Both  theories  have  gained  adherents,  Mr. 
Fleay's  by  far  the  more ;  but  neither  side  has  put  forth  a  sig- 
nificant new  argument.  No  really  exhaustive  study  of  the 
problems  has  ever  been  made. 

The  way  is  open.  Little  or  nothing,  after  all  the  discussion 
on  the  play,  has  been  settled  and  agreed  upon.     It  is  hard  to 

"  See  the  respective  editions. 

^^  Ulrici  thought  the  play  was  Shakspere's  throughout,  though  printed 
in  the  Folio  from  badly  corrupted  acting  versions.  Elze  followed  this 
opinion  but  was  also  inclined  to  think  that  portions  of  the  play  as  printed 
came  from  an  older  Timon  {William  Shakespeare,  1876).  G.  Kullmann 
argued  weakly  for  three  authors  (Archiv  fiir  Litetaturgeschichte,  1882). 
W.  Wendlandt  argued  quite  as  feebly  that  the  play  is  wholly  Shakspere's, 
though  he  thought  that  some  of  it  may  still  be  in  rough  draft    (Jahrbuch, 


6 

tiiul  a  siiij^lo  fact  on  which  the  critics  arc  unaninioiis.  Ahnost 
all  ajjrcc  that  the  play  had  two  authors;  yet  several  still  ilonhl  ; 
ami  even  this  helief  cannot  he  saiil  to  rest  ou  certainty.  Many 
scholars  come,  or  iiseil  to  ccMiie.  to  something,'  like  aij^reenient 
as  to  what  parts  of  the  play  each  aiitluir  wrote  ^Mr.  i'leay 
not  ilitYerini^  ninch  from  Delius  <.>n  this  head.  lUit  hardly  two 
entirely  concur;  and  recently  a  tendency  is  manifest  to  hreak 
what  agreement  has  existed.'-'  Divisions  of  the  play  ])etween 
the  autlu^rs  are  therefore  ahout  as  numerous  as  critics  who 
believe  in  its  dual  authorship.  And  even  on  the  general  agree- 
ment as  to  the  extent  of  each  author's  work  in  the  play, 
critics  have  built  two  opjiosing  theories  as  to  the  j)rocess  of 
its  composition.  Somewhat  less  than  half  believe  that  Shak- 
spere  revised  the  play  into  its  present  form ;  somewhat  more 
than  half  believe  that  he  began  the  play  which  some  one  else 
reworked  into  that  form.  Neither  side  has  furnished  wdiat 
may  be  called  proof,  and  neither  has  well  explained  how  the 
play,  even  with  two  authors,  could  very  naturally  have  assumed 
the  strange  form  which  it  now  possesses. 

In  reopening  the  problem,  therefore,  we  find  hardly  any- 
thing that  we  may  take  for  granted.  We  must  even  satisfy 
ourselves,  in  the  beginning,  that  the  discrepancies  of  style  and 
treatment  we  encounter  force  us  to  assume  two  authors  for 
the  play — Shakspere  and  another.  In  so  doing  we  shall  gain 
criteria,  stylistic  and  other,  of  each  author's  work ;  and  our 
next  step  will  be  to  divide  the  play  between  the  two,  if  pos- 
sible, correctly.  This  done,  we  shall  face  a  third  important 
question — whether  Shakspere's  parts  were  written  first  or  last, 
whether  Shakspere  or  the  other  writer  is  responsible  for  the 
peculiar  form  in  which  the  play  has  reached  us.  If,  finally, 
it  can  be  shown  that  Shakspere  was  the  first  to  work  on  the 
play,  we  shall  naturally  inquire  in  what  shape  he  left  it; 
whether  he  had  finished  it,  or  how,  in  case  he  left  it  incom- 
plete, he  would  have  finished  it ;  as  also  how  it  came  to  be 
interpolated,  and  how,  with  the  interpolations,  it  differs  from 
the  play  that  Shakspere  planned. 

"  Mr.  Deighton,  for  instance,  in  the  Arden  Timon,  wishes  to  transfer 
some  half-dozen  important  scenes  to  Shakspere. 


Other  questions  will  be  found  involved  with  these  as  we 
proceed.  One,  however,  comes  up  at  the  outset.  The  first 
inquiry  about  a  Shaksperean  play  is  usually  concerned  .with 
its  source  or  sources ;  and  in  our  first  search  for  a  clue  toward 
a  solution  of  a  case  of  suspected  dual  authorship  we  turn 
naturally  to  the  sources  that  each  author  or  both  authors  may 
have  utilized.  The  sources  of  Timon  are  only  somewhat  less 
doubtful  than  the  authorship.  Two  minor  ones  are  known; 
but  the  major  source  or  sources  are  in  question.  The  debate 
which  they  precipitate  may  well  have  a  first  chapter ;  not  only 
because  the  problem  of  the  sources  is  interesting  in  itself,  but 
also  because  it  will  afford  valuable  assistance  in  our  study  of 
the  authorship. 


CHAPTER   II 

Tin-:  Sources 

A  few  lines  in  any  classical  dictionary  will  tell  the  little 
that  we  know  and  guess  of  an  historical  Timon  the  Misan- 
thrope. The  earliest  stray  references  to  him  seem  to  mix 
fable  and  fact,  though  neither  in  great  (luantity ;  and  as  time 
goes  on,  what  fact  there  is  disappears  in  the  legend  gather- 
ing around  his  name.  Whether  or  not  he  was  still  living,  he 
was  known  well  enough  in  415  B.  C.  for  Phrynichus  to  let 
the  hero  of  his  comedy  the  Misanthrope  say  of  himself :  "  I 
live  like  Timon.  I  have  no  wife,  no  servant,  I  am  irritable 
and  hard  to  get  on  with.  I  never  laugh,  I  never  talk,  and 
my  opinions  are  all  my  ovvn."^  In  the  same  year  Aristophanes 
lets  his  Prometheus,  in  the  Birds,  claim  jestingly  to  be  the 
_the_gDds^:42ating  divinities  as  Timon  hates  human- 
ity.- Three  years  later  the  same  wtiter,  incidentally  inform- 
ing us  that  Timon  is  now  surely  dead,  points  to  him  again, 
in  the  Lysistrata,  as  a  t^ipical  maivliater.^  We  are  told  by 
Pkitajxli*  that  the  comic  poet  Plato  also  made  capital  of 
Timon's  fame ;  and  from  Antiphanes,°  nearly  half  a  century 
after  we  first  hear  of  the  misanthrope,  we  have  a  fragment  of 
a  comedy  which  actually  had  Timon  for  its  hero.  The  frag- 
ment is  too  small  further  to  indicate  the  nature  of  the  play; 
but  its  existence,  with  the  other  references,  shows  that  Timon 
was  a  distinct  figure  in  the  Old  and  Middle  Comedy. 

More  than  a  century  later,  Alexandrian  epigrammatists  are 
found  composing  epitaphs  on  Timon ;  and  these  bits  of  verse 
are  interesting  as  showing  the  endurance  of  his  fame  and  as 
adding  some  slight  features  to  his  legend,  but  especially  be- 

^  Frag.    18.     For    full    treatment    of    the   ancient    Timon    legend    see    Dr. 
Franz   Bertram's  Die   Timonlegende  in   der  antiken  Literatur,   Heidelberg, 
1906. 
'Line  1547.  'Line  805. 

itonius,   38.  ''Athenaeus,  VII,   309   d. 

8 


9 

cause  two  of  the  epitaphs,  passing  through  Plutarch  and  North, 
were  joined  in  the  double  epitaph  on  Timon's  tomb  in  the 
Shaksperean  play.  Historical  and  philosophic  writers,  yet 
much  later,  are  still  adding  to  Timon's  story.  Cicero  seems 
to  rank  him  as  a  cynic  philosopher;*'  so  does  Seneca;'^  while 
the  elder  Pliny  definitely  classes  him  with  Heraclitus,  Pyrrho, 
and  Diogenes.®  In  another  reference®  Cicero  tells  us  some- 
thing more  interesting  about  him ;  even  a  recluse  like  Timon,  he 
says,  must  have  some  companion.  No  one  else  is  meant, 
apparently,  than  Apemantus ;  for  already  Aristoxenus  of  Ta- 
rentum  had  supplied  that  "  innocuous  one  "  as  Timon's  com- 
rade.^^  Strabo  gives  the  story  still  another  turn.^^  ]\Iarc 
Antony,  he  tells  us,  started  to  live  a  very  strange  life  after  the 
fight  at  Actium;  seeing  his  friends  all  fallen  from  him,  he 
began  to  think  himself  a  second  Timon,  and  to  act  accordingly. 
Now  the  fact  that  Timon  had  once  been  prosperous,  and  had 
turned  misanthrope  only  after  losing  wealth  and  friends,  had 
not  been  mentioned  in  any  earlier  extant  reference.  The  mo- 
tive was  common  enough,  and  may  have  been  connected  with 
Timon  long  before;  perhaps  may  have  been  historical  with 
him.     But  it  is  in  Strabo  that  we  first  hear  of  the  fact. 

Repeating  this  story  about  Antony,  Plutarch^^  is  tempted 
into  some  remarks  upon  the  life  and  character  of  Timon, 
which,  as  we  shall  see,  form  one  sure  source  of  the  Shaks- 
perean play.  Brief  as  the  account  is,  it  sums  up  about  all  that 
we  have  heard  of  Timon  previously,  and  adds  some  further 
facts.  Antony,  says  Plutarch,  forsook  Alexandria  and  built 
himself  a  solitary  abode  by  the  sea,  in  order  that  he  might 
there  live  a  life  like  Timon's.  "  For  the  unthankfulness  of 
those  he  had  done  good  unto,  and  whom  he  took  to  be  his 
friends,  he  was  angry  with  all  men,  and  would  trust  no  man." 
This  Timon,  the  narrative  continues,  was  an  Athenian  in  the 
time  of  the  Peloponnesian  wars.  He  shunned  all  company  but 
that  of  Alcibiades ;  but  him  he  feasted  and  held  dear  because 

''Tusc,  IV,  ii.  ^Epistle  II,   iv,   7. 

^Nat.  Hist.,  VII,   ig.  ^ De  Amicilia,  XXIII,  87. 

^"Diogenes   Laertius,   I,  ix,    107.  ^^  Geography,  XVII,  9. 

"  Antonhis,  38. 


10 

he  know  tliat  one  day  AloihiatU-s  wouKl  prove  tlu-  hano  of 
Athens.  With  a  certain  cK>ggcd  Apcniantus,  also,  as  like  to 
like.  Tinion  sometimes  consorted.  Once,  as  they  ate  together, 
Apemantus  saiil,  "Mere  is  a  trim  hancpiet,  Timon ; "  "Yea," 
replied  the  latter,  "  so  thon  wert  not  near."  On  another  day 
Timon  gathered  the  Athenians  in  the  market-place  to  ofTcr 
them  the  use  of  a  tree  of  his  to  liang  themselves  upon.  He 
was  huried  by  the  sea;  and  the  water  came  in  around  his  tomb 
and  hid  it.  Plutarch  quotes  the  two  epitaphs  mentioned  above. 
In  his  Life  of  Alcibiadcs^^  he  again  mentions  Timon  as  the 
latter's  friend  ;  and  there  he  also  gives  the  name  of  Alcibiades' 
companion,  the  Timandra  of  our  play.'* 

So  far  we  have  only  a  few  scattered  bits  of  information 
about  Timon,  a  mention  of  a  lost  comedy  on  his  life,  and  one 
somewhat  more  extended  account  of  him.  In  the  century  after 
Plutarch,  however,  we  encounter  a  long  treatment  of  his  story 
in  a  work  of  the  imagination  bordering  on  dramatic  form. 
Lucian's  comic  dialogue  of  Timon  the  Misanthrope  is  the  first 
full  expansion  of  the  Timon  legend  extant  from  antiquity. 
To  be  sure,  it  covers  Timon's  days  of  glory  by  description  only. 
.  The  opening  soliloquy  of  Timon  tells  how  he  had  raised 
I  Athenians  to  high  places  in  those  days,  had  turned  the  poor 
\  to  rich,  aided  all  the  needy,  flung  his  wealth  to  the  winds,  and 
\thereby  gone  to  beggary  himself ;  and  how  his  former  proteges 
now  hurry  past  him  in  the  fields  where  he  is  digging,  as  if 
he  were  a  tombstone  which  they  did  not  care  to  read.  But 
all  this  is  incidental_to_Timon's  mock-heroic  prayer  to  Zeus 
for  help~an3^  for  revenge  "on  liTs  false  friends ;  and  the  action 
stafti^as^euSj;_remernbering  thejiecatombs  that  Timon  used 
to  sacrifice,  sends  Hermes  with  Plutiis  and  Thesaurus  to 
Tim6^n>-^dr^'MucIi  amusing  dialogue  is  needed  to  induce_the 
god  of  riches  once  more  to  visit  tlie  man  who  made  such 
wantQ^~use^^  hirri_u}_forrfieF  days.  Even  \vhen  finally  per- 
suaded he  comes  to  Timon  in  the  fields  only  to  find  the  latter 
quite  as  loth  to  receive  him  and  accept  his  gifts  as  he  had  been 
to  come  and  bring  them.  Timon  is  quite  happy  in  the  company 
of  his  choice  friends  and  helpers,  Poverty,  Toil,  Endurance, 

'*  Paragraph  4.  "  Paragraph    i  o. 


11 

Wisdom,  and  Hunger;  he  will  be  entirely  at  peace  if  Plutus  ^ 
and  his  Treasure  will  only  leave  him  alone  to  dig.  For  some  / 
time  he  continues  thus  defiant ;  but  Plutus  and  Hermes  finally 
win  him  over,  get  him  to  dig  as  they  direct,  and  to  unearth  a 
mass  of  gold.  This  discovery  of  gold  is  Lucian's  main  con- 
tribution to  the  Timon  story ;  and  the  use  the  misanthrope 
makes  of  the  treasure  is  his  most  significant  advance  in  the 
direction  of  the  Shaksperean  man-hater.  Timon  is  immedi- 
ately resolved  to  build  himself  a  tiny  castle  in  some  desert 
corner  and  to  shut  out  from  it  all  society.  Yet  he  does  wish 
that  his  old  parasites  might  know  of  his  new  wealth  and  fret 
themselves  with  envy ;  and  even  as  he  wishes,  they  begin  to 
come.  Gnathonides  is  first.  When  Timon  asked  an  alms  of 
him  a  little  while  ago,  he  replied  by  offering  a  halter.  But 
now  he  rushes  up  with  a  dainty  new  song  for  Timon — and  is 
rewarded  with  some  licks  from  Timon's  spade.  The  bald- 
head  Philiades  follows  him.  He  had  sung  a  song  once  that 
no  one  else  would  praise ;  though  Timon  gave  him  a  farm  for 
it,  and  a  portion  for  his  daughter.  Later  Timon  called  on  him 
for  help  and  received  only  blows.  But  now  that  Timon  is 
rich  once  more,  Philiades  hastens  to  warn  him  against  those 
abominable  flatterers  who  would  like  to  drain  him  again.  He 
gets  a  taste  of  the  spade,  and  makes  way  for  Demeas.  This 
orator  Demeas  is  the  man  whom  Timon  redeemed  from  prison ; 
who  later  refused  Timon  theater-money  on  the  ground  that 
Timon  was  not  a  citizen.  But  now  the  orator  wants  to  be 
counted  Timon's  "  cousin  " ;  and  to  name  his  son  for  Timon — 
he  is  going  to  be  married  next  year,  he  says.  He  is  proceed- 
ing to  read  a  resolution  lauding  Timon  which  he  means  to 
present  to  the  Areopagus,  when  the  spade  cuts  him  short. 
Soon  the  crowd  begins  to  get  too  thick  for  the  spade.  Thra- 
sycles,  Blepsias,  Laches,  Gniphon,  all  Timon's  friends  come 
running'  up ;  and  Timon  has  to  mount  a  hill  and  stone  them 
off.  The  dialogue  ends  as  they  leave.  With  it,  practically, 
closes  the  tradition  in  the  ancient  world ;  for  the  few  refer- 
ences to  Timon  left  before  the  silence  of  the  Middle  Ages  shut 
down  on  him  add  little  to  his  story — nothing  at  all,  in  fact,  of 
interest  to  the  student  of  the  English  Timon. 


I -2 

With  tlic  Renaissance  Tinion  reappeared;  and  iiukcil  had 
the  distinction  of  inspirinjj  what  is  usually  called  the  first 
modern  comedy.  Although  Hoiardo's  //  Tinionr.^^  written 
before  1494.  is  interesting;  as  showing  a  revived  attention  to 
the  misanthrojie,  it  contributed  little  to  the  actual  growth  of 
the  legend.  It  is  Lucian's  story  retold,  with  one  feature 
addcil — a  sub-plot,  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  acts  only,  in  which 
the  rightful  owner  of  the  gold  Tinion  has  found  comes  to 
light  and  regains  his  money.  But  the  added  feature,  at  least 
in  England,  did  not  stick  to  the  legend ;  this  remained  as  it 
had  stood  in  Lucian  and  in  Plutarch.  Nor  was  it  much 
changed  by  a  second  Ti))io)ic,^°  a  comedy  in  which  Gallcotto 
del  Caretto  very  quickly  followed  Boiardo  in  following  Lucian. 

In  Elizabethan  England  Timon's  story  was  well-known. 
"  The  strange  and  beastly  nature  of  Timon  of  Athens  "  is  the 
title  of  the  twenty-eighth  novel  in  the  first  tome  of  Painter's 
Palace  of  Pleasure.  The  story  is  based  on  Plutarch ;  and  is 
indeed  almost  as  faithful  a  translation  as  that  which  North 
made  thirteen  years  later.  From  then  on,  Timon  was  a  fa- 
miliar figure  in  all  kinds  of  books.  "  Who  more  envious," 
asks  Lyly,  in  Eupliues,^~  "than  Timon,  denouncing  all  human 
society?  "  Advocating  the  schooling  of  girls  in  his  Positions, ^^ 
Richard  Mulcaster  is  afraid  that  "  some  Timon  will  say,  '  what 
should  women  do  with  learning?  '  "  Nor  is  this  the  only  ref- 
erence to  Xi^es=,as..,ajwoman-hater.  Robert  Greene,  in  one  of 
his  six  references  to  the  misanthrope,^"  says  it  is  "  Timon-like 
to  condemn  those  heavenly  creatures."  Spencer  has  a  ref- 
erence : 

"  What   heart   so    stony   hard   but   that   would   weep, 
And  pour  forth  fountains  of  incessant  tears  ? 
What  Timon  but  would  let  compassion  creep 
Into  his  breast  and  pierce  his  frozen  ears?  "" 

"  Torraca's  //  Teatro  Italiano  dei  Sec.  XIII,  XIV,  XV. 

"Ante  1497;  Ireneo  Sanesi,  Storia  dei  Generi  Lelterarii  Italiaiti:  La 
Commedia,  page  170. 

"  Arber's  reprint,  page  40. 

"Quick  Ed.,  1888,  page  174. 

"r;:e  Card  of  Fancy,  Grosart  Ed.,  IV,  40;  for  the  other  five  see  the 
same  ed.,  Ill,  79;  IV,  139;  VII,  285;  IX,   106;   IX,   129. 

^  Daphnaida,  246. 


13 

Nash  complains  that  "  riches  have  hurt  a  great  number  in 
England,  who,  if  their  riches  had  not  been,  had  still  been  men, 
and  not  Timonists."-^  Speaking  of  "  dullness  of  spirit,"  Lodge 
says  it  formerly  "  made  certain  discontented  (as  Timon  and 
Apermantus)  wax  careless  of  body  and  soul,  fretting  them- 
selves at  the  world's  ingratitude."-^  Edward  Guilpin's  Skia- 
lethia  (1598)  contain  this  line: 

"  Like  hate-man  Timon  in  his  cell  he  sits.""^ 

Two  of  the  controversial  plays  about  1601-2  use  Timon's 
name.  In  Jack  Drum's  Entertainment  one  of  the  characters 
proposes  to  be  "  as  sociable  as  Timon  of  Athens."-*  And  in 
the  Satiromastix,  Dekker  makes  Horace  say: 

"  I  did  it  to  retire  me  from  the  world, 
And  turn  my  muse  into  a  Timonist, 
Loathing  the  general  leprosy  of  sin.""° 

Dekker  twice  again  refers  to  Timonists.-^  And  we  must  not 
forget  that  Shakspere  himself  knew  Timon  early: 

"  And  critic  Timon  laugh  at  idle  toys," 

is  a  line  in  Love's  Labour's  Lost.-'' 

These  lines  are  not  of  much  importance  for  us  here  ex- 
cept as  showing  that  to  Shakspere  and  his  fellows  Timon  was 
a  stock  exponent  of  misanthropy;  and  that  any  dramatist  who 
took  him  for  a  hero  might  have  found  at  least  a  few  hints  for 
his  character  in  current  tradition.  Of  course  the  references 
quoted  are  too  slight  to  be  considered  sources  in  themselves 
for  the  Shaksperean  play;  nor  do  they  testify  to  any  treatment 
of  the  legend  after  North,  in  dramatic  form  or  otherwise,  that 
might   have    served    as    such   a   source.     So    far    North    and 

'^Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem,  Grosart  Ed,,  IV,  139. 

^^  Wit's  Misery,  Hunterian  Club  Pub.,  No.  47,  page  100.  It  is  interesting 
that  the  spelling  Apermantus  appears  frequently,  though  not  significantly, 
in  the  Shaksperean  play. 

^  Ed.  J.   P.   Collier,  Miscellaneous  Tracts,  page   i8. 

-*  Act  I,  line  314. 

-•'•  Line  2502.  "  General  leprosy,"  whether  taken  hence  or  not,  is  the 
final  plague  that  the  Shaksperean  Timon   invokes  on  Athens — IV,  i,   30. 

^Grosart  Ed.,  II,  214;  III,  74. 

=MV,  iii,   169. 


14 

Painter  jjivc  ilu-  only  lonij  avoouiU-^  i>f  'I'imoii  in  r.iij^lisli.'-" 
W'c  know  on  other  jjroiuuls.  however,  that  the  story  (hd  rini 
into  ilraina  before  Shakspere.  An  anonymous  comedy  on 
Timon  is  extant  from  alxiut  i6cm,  and  was  fust  eihted  hy 
Dyce.""  The  author  of  this  knew  his  Lucian  well,  borrowed 
several  names  from  him.  and  followed  him  with  care  in  the 
main  plot  of  the  play.  Yet  in  dramatizing  Lucian  he  found 
certain  chanj^cs  necessary  or  advisable.  All  of  these,  so  far 
as  can  be  told,  are  of  his  own  invention  ;  and  as  some  of  them 
appear  again  in  the  Shakspcrean  play,  they  are  the  most  in- 
teresting features  of  his  work.  Departing  from  all  earlier 
writers,  he  devotes  half  of  his  comedy  to  Timon  in  prosperity; 
shows  him  scattering  his  gold  among  the  people,  revelling  with 
his  friends,  enriching  favorites,  discharging  his  steward  for 
protesting  against  his  lavishness,  receiving  him  again  in  the 
disguise  of  a  soldier,  paying  one  Eutrapelus  out  of  a  usurer's 
hands  with  five  talents,  rescuing  Demeas  (Lucian's  orator) 
from  the  Serjeants  with  sixteen, — even  falling  in  love  with  the 
daughter  of  an  old  Philargurus,  a  miser,  who  accepts  him  be- 
cause he  asks  no  dowry.  Timon  is  about  to  take  his  bride 
when  his  calamity  comes ;  not  from  overwhelming  debts,  as  in 
the  later  play,  but  from  the  wreck  of  all  his  ships,  as  with 
Antonio.  He  is  penniless.  Instantly  his  friends  are  "  sick  to 
see  his  face."  When  he  begs,  one  ofifers  him  a  groat,  another 
a  halter;  some  bid  him  clothe  himself  with  virtue,  others  fail 
to  recognize  him.  Only  the  faithful  steward  clings  to  him — 
as  in  the  Shaksperean  play.  Through  the  steward  Timon 
now  announces  that  he  has  only  been  having  a  joke,  that  he  has 
yet  a  little  money,  and  will  spend  it  in  one  last  banquet  for 
his  friends.  The  latter  gather  with  great  appetites;  and  are 
treated  to  a  hail  of  stones  painted  like  artichokes.  This  mock- 
banquet  is  first  heard  of  in  the  Timon  comedy;  in  the  Shaks- 
perean play  we  know  it  forms  the  climax.     Timon  now  leaves 

^  In  the  Felicity  of  Man  (1598)  Sir  Richard  Barckley  repeated  Painter's 
tale.  Shakspere  may  well  have  known  Barckley's  book ;  but  the  question 
is  immaterial,  as  we  know  that   he  knew   Painter's. 

"Shakespeare  Society  Transactions,  1842.  The  fact  that  it  contains  a 
reference  to  Jonson's  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  helps  us  to  date  the 
anonymous  comedy  near  1600. 


15 

the  city  to  dig  in  the  fields.  He  is  still  followed  by  the  stew- 
ard, though  he  scarcely  allows  even  this  faithful  servitor  to 
dig  in  a  far  corner  of  the  ground;  he  hates  all  men.  When 
he  spades  up  gold,  it  only  adds  to  his  vexation.  He  makes 
ready  straightway  to  bury  it  again  or  drown  it  in  the  ocean. 
Even  when  dissuaded  by  the  steward  from  that  course,  he  can 
only  think  of  taking  it  to  some  desert  place  where  he  can  live 
alone  with  it.  "  Thee  also  will  I  fly,"  he  tells  the  steward, 
"  thy  love  doth  vex  me."  But  he  cannot  fly  so  fast  as  to 
escape  his  former  flatterers,  who  now  come  flocking  to  his 
new-found  treasure — and  who  receive,  as  in  Lucian,  proper 
treatment  from  his  spade.  Even  when  they  are  gone  he  does 
not  fly.  At  the  last  moment  he  begins  to  "  feel  a  sudden 
change  " ;  and  to  make  a  happy  ending,  "  Timon  doffs  Timon  " 
and  goes  home  to  Athens.  The  end  is  not  entirely  out  of 
keeping;  for  in  spite  of  a  few  heavy  scenes  the  spirit  of  the 
work  is  comic,  as  is  that  of  all  preceding  treatments  of  the 
legend ;  and  a  strong  under-plot,  neligible  for  our  present  pur- 
pose though  it  takes  up  half  the  play,  is  pure  farce. 

Less  than  a  decade  later,  in  the  Shaksperean  play,  the  story 
found  its  supreme  expression  in  one  of  the  bitterest  of  trage- 
dies. The  first  thing  to  be  said  here  about  this  development 
of  the  legend  is  that,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  it  had  no 
known  source — nothing  to  correspond  to  the  older  King  John 
or  the  pre-Shaksperean  Taming  of  a  Shrezv.  Indebtedness 
the  play  shows  to  various  sources.  The  author  of  the  tragedy 
on  the  intense  but  tenuous  Timon  legend  needed  and  took  hints 
wherever  he  could  find  them — a  general  idea  here,  a  char- 
acter there,  an  episode  yonder.  Still  he  added  and  trans- 
formed so  much  that  as  a  whole  his  plot  is  almost  as  pure  cre- 
ation as  the  dress  in  which  he  clothed  it.  In  fact  he  had  no 
great  number  of  possible  sources,  and  hardly  one  of  these  was 
adequate.  There  was  Lucian's  dialogue ;  the  comedies  of 
Boiardo  and  Caretto  closely  imitating  it;  the  English  comedy 
following  it  somewhat  further  off;  Plutarch's  brief  extract 
on  Timon;  and  Painter's  repetition  of  Plutarch.  We  need 
only  compare  Timon  of  Athens  with  any  of  these  works,  or 
with  all  of  them  together,  to  see  how  much  its  author  in- 
vented and  how  much  more  he  transformed.     Our  search  is 


ic. 

therefore  narrcnveil  to  the  liiiits  he  took  from  e.ioh  source 
that   lie   knew. 

There  is  nothitijj  to  inthcate  that  he  knew  lioiardo  or  C'aretto. 
We  cannot  prove  the  negative,  of  course;  he  may  have  read 
tlieir  plays;  hut  if  he  did.  he  made  no  use  of  them  in  his  own. 
All  that  he  lias  in  common  with  them  may  he  found  in  I.ucian 
and  in  the  English  Timon  comedy,  one  or  hoth  of  whicli.  as 
we  shall  see.  he  certainly  used.  Wiicrcver  the  Italian  dram- 
atists tlepart  from  Lucian.  our  author  fails  to  follow  them ; 
and  not  a  line  or  phrase  of  his  work  suggests  his  acquaintance 
with  their  plays.  Whether  or  not,  then,  he  had  ever  heard  of 
the  two  plays,  they  may  safely  be  dismissed  as  sources.  He 
is  therefore  left  with  four  (or  practically  three)  possible 
sources :  Lucian  and  the  English  comedy  on  the  one  hand ; 
Plutarch  (and  Painter's  transcript)  on  the  other. 

Plutarch  could  give  him  little ;  but  that  little  he  used  to  the 
full.  Plutarch  buried  his  Timon  on  the  sea-shore ;  our  dra- 
matist also  "  taught  him  to  make  vast  Neptune  weep  for  aye 
on  his  low  grave."^"  Plutarch  told  how  Timon  offered  the 
Athenians  a  tree  on  which  to  hang  themselves ;  an  incident 
finely  realized  in  the  play.^^  Timon's  two  epitaphs  in  Plu- 
tarch are  combined  as  one  in  the  play.^^  But  Plutarch's 
two  main  hints  were  the  characters  of  Apemantus  and  Al- 
cibiades.  These  were  indeed  hints  only ;  two  or  three  sen- 
tences about  each  man,  from  which  the  dramatist  developed 
two  important  characters  and  the  double  contrast  of  the  play. 
All  that  Plutarch  says  of  Apemantus  is  that  he  was  like  unto 
Timon  and  that  Timon  once  protested  he  could  eat  more  com- 
fortably in  Apemantus'  absence.  The  protest  is  repeated  in 
the  play;''  while  the  hint  of  Apemantus'  nature  is  rounded  out 
into   a   character,   a   lineal   descendant   of   Lyly's   Diogenes,'* 

•"TV,  iii,  379;  V,  i,  218;  V,   iv,   78. 

"V,  i,  208. 

**  Where   they   contradict   each   other ;   see   page   54,   note. 

"IV,  iii,  284. 

•*  In  the  general  conception  of  his  character,  and  particularly  in  the 
manner  of  his  address,  Apemantus  closely  resembles  the  Diogenes  of 
Lyly's  Campaspe — much  more  closely,  in  fact,  than  he  resembles  the 
Diogenes  of  Lucian's  Sale  of  Philosophers ;  and  the  former  work  was 
surely  known  to  our  author,  while  the  latter  was  unavailable  in  English. 


17 

whose  inborn  but  frittering  cynicism  forms  an  effective  con- 
trast to  Timon's  powerful  though  acquired  misanthropy.  In 
Plutarch's  sketch  of  Timon,  Alcibiades  is  merely  mentioned 
as  the  only  man  whom  Timon  loves — because  he  knows  that 
Alcibiades  will  one  day  prove  the  bane  of  Athens.  The  mo- 
tive recurs  in  the  play  f^  and  the  character,  taking  on  some 
general  traits  from  Plutarch's  separate  Life  of  Alcihiades,^^ 
becomes  a  kind  of  Fortinbras  in  the  drama,  fighting  out  the 
wrongs  at  which  Timon  can  only  curse. 

Yet  when  our  author  had  expanded  twenty-fold  the  hints 
that  Plutarch  gave  him,  he  had  still  far  too  little  for  a  play. 
An  ill-defined  hero,  three  or  four  lesser  episodes,  one  minor 
and  two  major  characters,  are  all  his  heritage  from  this  branch 
of  the  legend.  Even  the  characters  he  found  almost  wholly 
static.  The  most  that  Plutarch  says  of  the  course  of  Timon's 
life  is  that  his  misanthropy  was  due  to  "  the  unthankfulness 
of  those  he  had  done  good  unto."  For  all  further  details 
of  Timon's  life — his  early  affluence,  his  kindnesses  to  flat- 
terers, their  desertion  of  him,  his  change  of  nature,  his  mock- 
banquet,  his  departure  from  Athens,  his  digging  in  the  fields, 
discovery  of  gold,  repulsion  of  the  friends  who  then  flock 
to  him ;  as  well  as  for  the  characters  of  Ventidius,  the  Old 
Athenian,  and  the  faithful  steward — for  all  these  things,  some 
of  which  had  general,  and  the  others  very  definite  sources,  our 
dramatist  had  to  go  elsewhere.  In  only  two  places  that  we 
know  could  he  have  found  any  of  them :  Lucian  and  the 
English  comedy. 

It  is  evident  at  once  that  Lucian  could  have  supplied  some 
of  these  features  and  that  the  old  comedy  could  have  sup- 
plied them  all;  that  particularly  the  important  character  of 
the  faithful  steward  and  the  striking  episode  of  the  mock- 
banquet,  surely  not  repeatable  by  accident,  are  not  in  Lucian 
or  in  any  other  version  of  the  Timon  legend  excej)t  the  old 
comedy.  Before  going  on,  however,  to  see  whether  Lucian 
or  the  comedy  nearest  approximates  our  play,  we  may  well 

^^  IV,  iii,  105. 

^  Specifically,  the  name  of  Timandra  comes  from  the  Life  of  Alcibiades, 
paragraph  10. 
3 


IS 

consider  certain  objections  to  either  as  a  possil)le  source  f«M-  it. 
Lucian's  dialogue,  so  far  as  is  known,  had  not  been  F.nghshed. 
That  it  was  not  unknown  in  Enijilanil  the  old  comedy  indeed 
shows;  and  as  it  hail  heen  three  times  translated  into  Italian 
and  at  least  once  into  French,'"*'  our  author  would  not  neces- 
sarily have  had  to  go  to  the  Greek  for  it.  lUit  at  best  he  would 
have  hail  to  go  outside  of  his  own  language.  As  for  the  old 
comedy,  it  has  always  been  supposed  to  be  an  academic  piece. 
We  are  pretty  sure  that  it  was  acted,  as  Dyce  points  out,^"  yet 
if  only  at  a  university,  quite  possibly  without  the  knowledge 
of  the  London  author  of  T'niion  of  .Ithciis.  This  objection 
did  not  seem  so  serious,  to  be  sure,  to  some  of  the  earlier 
critics.  Steevens  was  inclined  to  think  that  the  old  play  sup- 
plied certain  features  to  Ti)uon  of  .UJiciis;  and  Malone  stated 
the  fact  as  certain.  But  Dyce,  first  editing  the  old  play,  was 
more  cautious :  "  I  leave  to  others  a  minute  discussion  of  the 
question  whether  or  not  Shakspere  was  indebted  to  the  present 
piece.  I  shall  merely  observe  that  I  entertain  considerable 
doubts  of  his  having  been  acquainted  with  a  drama  which  was 
certainly  never  performed  in  the  metropolis."^"  Since  Dyce 
such  doubts  have  steadily  grown  more  considerable,  with  the 
most  recent  critics  frequently  amounting  to  negation.  Prac- 
tically all  the  critics  now  agree  that  the  academic  origin  of  the 
English  comedy  is  a  more  insuperable  objection  than  the  non- 
translation  of  Lucian's  dialogue,  and  that  the  author  therefore 

"Into  Italian  in  1527,  anonymously,  and  again  in  1535  and  1551,  both 
times  by  Nicolo  da  Lonigo  ;  into  French  in  1582  by  Filbert  Bretin. 

"  The  numerous  and  minute  stage-directions — referring  in  almost  every 
scene  to  this  or  that  "  door  "  by  which  the  characters  were  to  enter,  to 
implements  they  were  to  bring  with  them  for  later  use,  etc. — go  far 
toward  showing  that  the  play  was  presented ;  and  Dyce  clinched  the  matter 
by  discovering  that  in  Act  V,  Scene  ii,  where  Timon  and  the  steward 
enter  to  dig,  a  stage-direction  which  had  read  "Enter  Timon  and  Laches 
with  either  a  spade  in  their  hands "  is  carefully  altered  in  the  manuscript 
to  read  "  Enter  Timon  and  Laches  with  3  spades  in  their  hands " — the 
third  spade  having  been  found  necessary,  in  the  actual  presentation,  in 
order  that  Gelasimus  might  also  dig  at  the  end  of  the  next  scene.  See 
Dyce's  introduction  to  the  play,  Shakespeare  Society  Transactions,  1842. 

'^  For  the  view  of  Steevens  and  Malone,  also,  see  Dyce's  introduction. 


19 

used  the  dialogue,  but,  despite  the  repetition  of  the  steward  and 
the  mock-banquet,  did  not  know  the  old  play.*° 

Let  us  note  the  points  in  which  T'unon  resembles  either  of 
the  possible  sources. 

In  the  first  scene  Timon  redeems  Ventidius  from  a  debtor's 
prison  with  five  talents.*^  In  the  beginning  of  the  old  play  one 
Eutrapelus,  chased  by  a  usurer,  asks  Timon  for  four  talents 
to  pay  off  his  debt ;  and  Timon  answers,  "  Yea,  take  five."^^ 
The  nearest  parallel  in  Lucian — but  this  is  also  repeated  in 
the  old  play*^ — is  the  narrated  rescue  of  Demeas,  where  the 
sum  is  sixteen  talents. 

After  rescuing  Ventidius,  Timon  endows  a  servant  in  order 
that  the  latter  may  wed  the  daughter  of  a  certain  frugal  Old 
Athenian.  In  the  old  play  a  miser,  Philargurus,  is  seeking  to 
marry  off  his  daughter  to  a  wealthy  husband.  In  Lucian  it  is 
said  that  Timon  gave  a  dowry  to  the  daughter  of  a  bald-head 
Philiades  for  a  song  the  latter  sang.  One  parallel  is  about  as 
close  as  the  other. 

Half  of  the  Shaksperean  play  is  devoted  to  Timon  in  luxury, 
enriching  flatterers.  This  phase  of  Timon's  life  was  first 
presented  in  the  old  play,  being  only  implied  in  Lucian.  About 
the  middle  of  both  plays  Timon  goes  bankrupt,  his  friends 
fall  off,  and  he  turns  misanthrope  and  leaves  Athens. 

In  the  Shaksperean  play  Timon  is  digging  for  roots  when 

*"  Only  one  "  minute  discussion  of  the  question "  that  Dyce  "  left  to 
others  "  followed  within  sixty  years,  and  this  argued  for  the  above  opinion. 
Adolf  Miiller,  the  author  of  Uber  die  Quellen  aus  denen  Shakespeare  Timon 
von  Athen  entnommen  hat,  Jena,  1873,  recognized  the  parallels  between 
the  old  play  and  the  Shaksperean  tragedy  in  the  character  of  the  faithful 
steward  and  the  episode  of  the  mock-banquet ;  but  he  thought  the  steward's 
character  exhibited  only  a  general  similarity  in  the  two  plays, — rather 
missing  the  main  point  that  there  should  be  any  steward  in  both  plays 
at  all ;  and  he  argued  that  the  mock-banquet  was  too  witty  a  device  to 
have  been  invented  by  the  author  of  the  old  play ;  and  therefore  assumed, 
practically  without  evidence,  a  lost  source  which  served  both  the  old 
comedy  and  the  Shaksperean  play.  In  a  well-written  article  on  the  sources 
of  Timon  in  the  Princeton  University  Bulletin  for  1904,  however,  Mr.  W. 
H.  demons  presented  much  the  same  argument  as  is  offered  in  the  present 
book.  "  I,  i,  95. 

«I,  ii,  60.  "MI,  iv. 


•JO 

lie  discovers  goKl ;  in  the  old  play  he  seems  to  di^  for  no 
csjMrcial  purpose;  in  Lucian  he  hirt-s  out  to  dig  for  sixpence  a 
day.  Wlicn  he  finds  the  gold,  in  the  Shaksperean  play,  he 
starts  straight \v.!\-  '■>  bury  it;  so  in  the  old  play;  not  so  in 
Lucian. 

The  crowil  thai  llocks  to  Tinion's  new-found  wealth  in  the 
Shaks|ierean  play  is  ecpially  like  that  in  the  old  play  and  that 
in  Lucian ;  or  rather,  differs  ec|ually  from  each.     The  general 
idea  is  the  same  in  all  three  works,  but  the  only  ])arasitc  in  the 
Shaksperean  play   who  shows  the  least  specific  similarity  to 
any  character  in  either  of  the  sources  is  the  poet ;  and  he  is  as 
much  like  the  Hermogenes  of  the  old  play,  whose  only  claim 
to  being  a  poet  is  that  he  can  sing  and  play  the  fiddle,  as  like 
the    Gnathonides    of    Lucian,    whose    poetic   activity    consists 
solely  in  bringing  Timon  a  copy  of  the  latest  song  from  Athens. 
To  sum  the  matter  up :  all  the  features  of  the  tragedy  that 
could  have  come  from  Lucian  could  quite  as  well  have  come 
from  the  old  comedy;  and  some  of  them — as  the  five  talents 
which  ransom  \'entidius — are  paralleled  in  the  old  comedy  but 
not  in  Lucian.    Now  over  and  above  all  this  we  have  the  faith- 
ful steward  and  the  mock-banquet  to  account  for  in  both  plays. 
The  striking  fact  about  the  steward  is  not  so  much  that  in  both 
plays  he  stands  by  his  master ;  or  that  in  both,  when  he  comes 
to  Timon  in  the  fields,  Timon  at  first  repels  him ;  the  striking 
thing  is  that  Timon  has  a  steward,  who  plays  an  important 
part,  in  both  plays.    And  the  significant  fact  about  the  Shaks- 
^perean  mock-banquet  is  not  the  one  so  often  mentioned,  namely 
/  that  a  guest  there  who  has  suffered  only  from  hot  water  cries 
y  out,  "  One  day  he  gives  us  diamonds,  next  day  stones" — words 
y  which  have  been  construed  as  a  possible  reminiscence  of  the 
old  comedy,  where  Timon  actually  throws  stones  painted  like 
artichokes ;  the  significant  thing  is  the  repetition  of  any  mock- 
/         banquet  at  all.     The  recurrence  of  the  steward  might  possibly 
— 'i    be  accidental ;  the  reproduction  of  the  mock-banquet  is  beyond 
/     all  the  "  canon  of  coincidence."    One  is  simply  driven  to  accept 
/       the  fact — unless  he  gratuitously  assumes  a  lost  source — that  the 
Shaksperean  play  derives  in  part  from  the  old  comedy. 
'    This  is  not  to  say  that  the  play  may  not  also  derive  in  part 


21 

from  Lucian.  The  sources  are  not  mutually  exclusive ;  the 
author  may  have  known  both.  Lucian  might  have  been  before 
him  in  Italian  or  in  French,  as  we  have  seen,  as  well  as  in  the 
Greek.**  In  some  ways  the  style  and  spirit  of  the  tragedy  re- 
semble Lucian  rather  than  the  old  play ;  and  for  that  reason  the 
one  recent  writer  who  holds  much  the  same  view  of  the  sources 
as  that  here  advanced  believes  that  Lucian  was  known  to  the 
author  of  the  tragedy.  "  The  Tiinon  of  Shakespeare,"  says 
Mr.  demons,  "is  not  the  Tirnon  of  the  academic  production; 
still  less  is  it  like  the  Timon  of  the  popular  Elizabethan  stories. 
In  the  depth  and  tone  of  his  misanthropy,  Lucian's  Timon  is 
the  true  prototype  of  Shakespeare's  Timon.*^  These  are  facts, 
undoubtedly;  yet  they  are  just  such  facts  as  we  find  true  of 
any  work  of  Shakspere.  Neither  is  the  Macbeth  of  Shakspere 
the  Macbeth  of  Holinshed,  nor  the  Lear  of  Shakspere  the  Lear 
of  the  older  dramatist  who  wrote  of  him,  nor  the  Hamlet  of 
Shakspere,  presumably,  the  Hamlet  of  Kyd.  We  should  never 
expect  Shakspere  to  picture  Timon  in  the  silly  fashion  of  the 
writer  of  the  old  play;  but  we  might  readily  expect  him  to 
conceive  a  Timon  who  should  show  some  general  resemblance, 
in  "  the  depth  and  tone  of  his  misanthropy,"  to  the  Timon 
drawn  in  Lucian's  able  manner.  Such  a  general  resemblance 
is  not  necessarily  the  result  of  imitation;  and  as  specific  paral- 
lels of  a  convincing  kind  are  lacking,***  a  direct  relation  between 

**  Far  too  much  has  been  made  of  the  argument — absolutely  the  sole 
argument  for  a  lost  source — that  the  mention  of  "  solidares,"  a  kind  of  coin, 
in  III,  i,  45,  betrays  a  Romance  source.  The  author  of  the  play  did  not 
necessarily  get  the  name  of  the  coin  from  a  work  on  Timon.  According 
to  Maginn,  "  saludores,"  i.  e.,  "  saluts  d'or,"  were  coined  in  France  by 
the  English  Henry  V ;  and  are  mentioned  by  Holinshed,  Ducange, 
Rabelais,  and  others.  See  Maginn,  Shakespeare  Papers,  Ed.  Mackenzie, 
i8s6,  HI,  135. 

"  Op.  cit.,  page  219. 

'"'  The  only  one  that  Mr.  demons  mentions  is  the  fact  that  Timon  ad- 
dresses an  apostrophe  to  the  gold  that  he  has  found  in  the  Shaksperean 
play,  as  he  also  does  in  Lucian,  Such  an  apostrophe  at  this  point  is  so 
entirely  natural — Timon  being  alone  and  in  the  midst  of  a  soliloquy  when 
he  finds  the  treasure — that  the  mere  recurrence  of  it  does  not  seem  very 
significant ;  and  its  substance  and  diction  do  not  resemble  Lucian  closely 
enough  to  prove  it  an  imitation.  No  such  apostrophe  is  found  in  the  old 
play ;  but  the  latter,  at  this  very  point,  shows  a  much  more  specific  like- 
ness to  our  tragedy — the  resolution  of  Timon  to  bury  the  gold. 


Lucian's  dialogue  aiiil  our  play  is  not  proved.  \\  hilc  it  is  not 
disprovetl  either,  that  rehition  is  at  K-ast  unnecessary  to  explain 
the  substance  of  the  play.  .Ml  the  features  oi  the  plot  therein 
that  could  have  come  from  Lueian  einild  as  well  have  come 
from  the  old  comeily.  That  comedy,  unless  some  document  is 
lost,  was  ciTtainlv  a  source;  Lucian  may  have  been  used  in 
addition. 

That  Shak.Npere  should  have  known  the  old  play  does  not 
seem  so  extraordinary  as  has  frecpiently  been  thought.  We 
have  never  hail  a  real  proof  that  the  play  originated  in  a 
university  ;  we  shall  never  know  quite  certainly  but  that  its 
learned  sophomoric  style  and  numerous  academic  phrases  were 
the  product  of  some  youthful  dramatist,  just  from  the  univer- 
sity perhaps,  who  had  not  yet  had  sufficient  chance  to  air  his 
scholasticism.  And  even  if  we  positively  knew  that  the  play 
hailed  from  Oxford  or  from  Cambridge,  the  objection  of  its 
origin  would  not  be  insurmountable.  Dramatists  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan period,  Shakspere  not  less  than  the  others,  searched  for 
plots  wherever  they  could  find  them.  Hamlet,  according  to  the 
title-page  of  the  quarto  of  1603,  had  recently  been  acted  at 
both  universities ;  at  a  date,  as  Mr.  Clemons  notes,  very  close 
to  that  of  the  production  of  the  Timon  comedy.  Traditions  of 
the  latter,  at  the  least,  may  have  lingered.  We  know,  more- 
over, that  Shakspere  must  have  been  familiar  with  Oxford ; 
he  lodged  with  the  D'Avenants  there,  on  trips  between  Strat- 
ford and  London.  It  is  therefore  by  no  means  impossible,  or 
even  unlikely,  that  he  should  have  heard  of  the  academic  play ; 
and  in  the  absence  of  any  other  explanation  for  certain  strik- 
ing features  in  his  own  Timon,  we  must  believe  that  he  heard 
at  least  some  account  of  it.  He  need  not  necessarily  have  seen 
or  read  it;  a  description  of  it  might  have  served  his  purpose. 

The  conclusion  of  this  chapter,  therefore,  is  that  Timon  of 
Athens  shows  indebtedness  to  Plutarch's  sketch  of  Timon  in 
his  Life  of  Antony,  and  perhaps  to  Painter's  repetition  of 
that  sketch ;  to  Plutarch's  Life  of  Alcibiades;  to  the  academic 
comedy  on  Timon;  and  possibly  to  Lucian's  dialogue.  No 
source  was  followed  closely;  all  that  came  from  any  source 
was  transfigured  in  the  play.    Yet  the  combined  sources  would 


23 


supply  all  the  important  elements  of  the  plot  in  Timon,  more 
or  less  in  full.  The  fact  will  be  apparent  from  the  adjoining 
table,  which  will  show  at  what  points — about  twenty — the 
sources  enter  the  play. 

The  Probable  Sources  of  the  Incidents  in   Timon  of  Athens 


Passage 

Incident. 

Plutarch  or 
Painter. 

The  Timon 
Comedy. 

Lucian  (?). 

Acts  I,  II,  and 
III. 

Timon's  benevolence,  gifts 
to  flatterers,  bankruptcy; 
the      desertion      of     his 
friends,  and  his  change 
to  misanthropy. 

Implied. 

First  realized. 

Narrated. 

I,  i,  94-iog. 

Redemption  of  Ventidius 
(5  talents). 

Of  Eutrapelus    (5 
talents).    Of  De- 
meas(  16  talents). 

Of  Demeas  (16 

talents). 

I,  i,  110-172. 

The  old  Athenian  with  his 
daughter. 

Philargurus      and 
daughter. 

Philiades. 

II,    ii;    IV,    iii; 
and /assim. 

The  faithful  steward. 

do. 

Ill,  vi. 

Ihe  mock-banquet 

do. 

IV,  iii,  25- 

Discovery  of  gold. 

do. 

do. 

IV,  iii,  27- 

Apostrophe  to  gold. 

do.  (?) 

IV,  iii,  45- 

Resolution  to  bury  it. 

do. 

IV,  iii,  and  V,  i. 

Crowd   of  flatterers  come 
to    new-found    treasure ; 
no  specific  imitation  ex- 
cept possibly  in  the  intro- 
duction of  the  character 
of  the  poet. 

do. 
Poet  =  Hermog- 
enes,  fiddler  and 
singer  (?). 

do. 
Poet  =  Gna- 
thonides,  who 
brings   a  new 
song  (?) 

IV,  iii,  106- 

Timon  encourages  Alcibi- 
ades   because   the   latter 
will      work      harm      to 
Athens. 

do. 

IV,  iii.  81- 

Timandra. 

do. 

IV,  iii,  283- 

Timon  would  rather  eat  in 
Apemantus'  absence. 

do. 

V,  i,  208- 

Off'ers  a  tree  for  Athenians 
to  hang  themselves. 

d  0. 

V,  i,  218:  V.iv. 
65 ;    and  pas- 
sim. 

Buried  on  sea-shore. 

do. 

V,  iv,  70- 

The  epitaphs. 

do. 

CHAPTER    III 

A  Division  of  Al'tmorship 

W  c  have  saiil  that  scholars  arc  all  but  finally  agreed  on 
double  authorship  in  Timou,  and,  roughly  speaking,  fairly 
well  agreed  on  what  each  author  wrote.  For  this  agreement 
there  are  three  main  reasons :  glaring  disparities  in  esthetic 
merit  between  different  sections  of  the  play;  striking  incon- 
gruities in  technic  between  the  same  sections ;  and  singular 
divergences  and  contradictions  in  treatment  and  in  matter. 
Having  merely  mentioned  these  peculiarities  in  a  former  chap- 
ter, we  must  now  examine  them  more  closely  to  see  wdiat 
grounds  they  give  us  for  believing  in  two  authors,  and  what 
criteria  for  the  work  of  each. 

There  are  many  scenes  and  passages  in  Timon  which,  no  one 
has  ever  doubted  and  no  one  will  ever  doubt,  are  Shakspere's 
work.  For  convenience  we  may  make  two  classes  of  them, 
without  trying  to  define  any  precise  line  between  the  two.  In 
the  first  class  come  those  passages  of  comparatively  unem- 
phatic  dialogue  which,  while  they  warrant  no  suspicion  of  any 
hand  but  Shakspere's,  while  they  may  indeed  be  pregnant  with 
such  ideas  and  such  images  and  phrases  as  seem  character- 
istic of  the  master,  yet  naturally  lack,  from  their  relatively  un- 
important place  and  purpose,  that  passion  which  was  usually 
necessary  to  take  Shakspere  to  the  height  where  none  could 
follow  him.  Such  passages  Shakspere  has  in  every  play ;  such, 
in  Timou,  fill  a  large  part  of  the  first  three  acts.  In  the  other 
class  come  scenes  and  passages  in  which  passions  as  intense 
as  Shakspere  ever  gave  to  any  character  find  expression  in 
supreme  p)oetry — poetry  coming  short  of  Lear,  perhaps,  in 
poignancy  of  diction,  and  certainly  in  pathos  of  situation,  but 
surpassing  even  Lear  or  Coriolanns  in  the  sheer  force  of  that 
emotion  which,  in  different  forms,  is  common  to  the  three 
plays.     Such  passages  comprise  much  of  the  last  two  acts. 

24 


25 

Let  us  examine  a  passage  of  the  first  kind.  We  need  not 
pick  the  best;  take  three  of  the  first  extended  speeches  in  the 
play: 

"  Poet.     Sir,   I   have   upon   a   high   and  pleasant   hill 
Feign'd    Fortune   to    be   thron'd :    the    base    o'    the    mount 
Is  rank'd  with  all  deserts,  all  kind  of  natures. 
That  labour  on  the  bosom  of  this  sphere 
To  propagate  their  states  :   amongst  them  all, 
Whose  eyes  are  on  this   sovereign  lady  fiix'd, 
One  do   I  personate  of  Lord  Timon's  frame, 
Whom  Fortune  with  her  ivory  hand  wafts  to  her ; 
Whose  present  grace  to  present  slaves  and  servants 
Translates   his   rivals. 

Painter.  'Tis  conceiv'd  to  scope. 

This  throne,  this   Fortune,  and  this  hill,  methinks. 
With  one  man  beckon'd  from  the  rest  below, 
Bowing  his  head  against  the  steepy  mount 
To  climb  his  happiness,  would  be  well  express'd 
In  our  condition. 

Poet.  Nay,  sir,  but  hear  me  on. 

All  those  which  were  his  fellows  but  of  late, 
Some  better  than  his  value,   on  the  moment 
Follow  his  strides,  his  lobbies  fill  with  tendance, 
Rain   sacrificial   whisperings   in   his   ear. 
Make  sacred  even  his  stirrup,  and  through  him 
Drink  the  free  air."  I,   i,  63. 

This  is  merely  exposition.  There  is  practically  no  emotion; 
no  incitement  to  a  soaring  flight  of  poetry.  The  passage  is 
excellent;  it  reaches  easily  the  plane  of  Shakspere  when  he 
is  not  stirred  to  a  great  moment  of  pathos  or  of  passion.  We 
do  no.t  need  to  say  it  is  inevitably  Shaksperean.  Should  we 
find  it  in  a  play  by  Chapman,  or  by  Massinger  or  Beaumont, 
we  should  have  no  doubt  that  any  of  these  dramatists  was 
equal  to  it;  we  find  it  in  a  play  printed  as  Shakspere's  and  we 
call  it  amply  good  enough  for  him.  If  there  were  nothing 
in  the  play  inferior  to  it,  we  should  have  no  reason  to  think 
that  Shakspere  did  not  write  the  whole;  if  the  work  suspected 
to  be  spurious  in  Timon  had  been  written  by  one  of  the  other 
authors  mentioned,  we  should  find  his  portions  hard  to  sepa- 
rate upon  esthetic  evidence.  But  when  we  find  that  in  artis- 
tic merit  the  suspected  portions,  one  and  all,  fall  so  far  below 


'20 

the  pas,<agc  wo  ha\c  iiiuitcil  that  their  author  caiiiint  rival  any 
great  Hlizabcthati  jHiot,  we  shall  have  strong  esthetic  reason 
to  consider  the  passage  quoted,  and  others  like  it  in  the  play, 
as  Shakspere's  work. 

Less  need  be  said,  then,  of  the  scenes  and  passages  of  the 
second  kind.  Take  two  speeches — and  again  we  do  not  need 
to  choose  the  best — surcharged  with  Tinion's  misanthropy; 
ten  might  be  found  like  them. 

■'  Be  as  a  planetary  plagtie,  when  Jove 
Will  o'er  some  high-viced  city  hang  his  poison 
In  the  sick  air ;  let  not  thy  sword  skip  one. 
Pity  not  honour'd  age  for  his  white  beard ; 
He  is  an  usurer.     Strike  me  the  counterfeit  matron ; 
It   is   her  habit  only   that   is   honest, 
Herself's  a  bawd.     Let  not  the  virgin's  cheek 
Make  soft  thy  trenchant  sword;  for  those  milk-paps, 
That  through  the  window-bars  bore  at  men's  eyes, 
Are  not  within  the  leaf  of  pity  writ, 

But  set  them   down  horrible  traitors.     Spare  not  the  babe, 
Whose  dimpled  smiles  from  fools  exhaust  their  mercy ; 
Think  it  a  bastard,  whom  the  oracle 
Hath  doubtfully  pronounced  thy  throat  shall  cut. 
And  mince  it  sans   remorse.     Swear  against  objects : 
Put  armour  on  thine  ears  and  on  thine  eyes. 
Whose  proof,  nor  yells  of  mothers,  maids,  nor  babes, 
Nor  sight  of  priests  in  holy  vestments  bleeding, 
Shall  pierce  a  jot.     There's  gold  to  pay  thy  soldiers: 
Make  large  confusion  ;  and  thy  fury  spent. 
Confounded  be  thyself!     Speak  not,  be  gone."     IV,  iii,  io8. 

"  That  nature,  being  sick  of  man's  unkindness, 
Should  yet  be  hungry !     Common  mother,  thou, 
Whose  womb  unmeasurable,  and  infinite  breast. 
Teems,  and  feeds  all ;  whose  self-same  mettle, 
Whereof  thy  proud  child,  arrogant  man,  is  puflF'd, 
Engenders  the  black  toad  and  adder  blue, 
The  gilded  newt  and  eyeless  venom'd  worm. 
With  all  the  abhorred  births  below  crisp  heaven 
Whereon  Hyperion's  quickening  fire  doth  shine ; 
Yield  him,  who  all  thy  human  sons  doth  hate. 
From  forth  thy  plenteous  bosom,  one  poor  root! 
Ensear  thy  fertile  and  conceptious  womb. 
Let  it  no  more  bring  out  ingrateful  man ! 


27 

Go  great  with  tigers,  dragons,  wolves,  and  bears ; 

Teem  with  new  monsters,  whom  thy  upward  face 

Hath  to  the  marbled  mansion  all  above 

Never  presented !     O,  a  root !  dear  thanks : 

Dry  up  thy  marrows,  vines,  and  plough-torn  leas  ; 

Whereof  ingrateful   man,   with   liquorish   draughts 

And  morsels  unctuous,  greases  his  pure  mind, 

That  from   it  all  consideration   slips!"  IV,   iii,   176. 

Argument  will  be  unnecessary  to  convince  a  reader  that  these 
are  from  the  pen  that  wrote  the  following  passage,  better 
known : 

"  Hear,  nature !  hear,  dear  goddess,  hear ! 
Suspend  thy  purpose,  if  thou  didst  intend 
To  make  this  creature  fruitful ! 
Into  her  womb  convey  sterility ! 
Dry  up  in  her  the  organs  of  increase. 
And  from  her  derogate  body  never  spring 
A  babe  to  honour  her !     If  she  must  teem, 
Create  her  child  of  spleen,  that  it  may  live. 
And  be  a  thwart  disnatur'd  torment  to  her ! 
Let  it  stamp  wrinkles  in  her  brow  of  youth, 
With   cadent  tears   fret  channels   in   her   cheeks, 
Turn  all  her  mother's  pains  and  benefits 
To  laughter  and  contempt,  that  she  may  feel 
How  sharper  than  a  serpent's  tooth  it  is 
To  have  a  thankless  child !  "  King  Lear,  I,  iv,  297. 

We  have  quoted  from  Shakspere  in  an  average  and  in  a 
greater  mood.  Now  along  with  such  passages  as  we  have 
illustrated,  there  are  many  scenes  and  passages  in  Timon 
which  a  reader  feels  at  once  to  be  unworthy  of  Shakspere  in 
any  mood.  Whoever  wrote  them  did  not  fail  entirely  of  being 
a  poet ;  indeed  he  seems  to  have  tried  hard  to  be  one ;  for  a 
striking  and  suspicious  trait  is  his  clear  striving  for  rhetorical 
effect.  Yet  the  product  is  too  thin  in  substance,  too  halting 
in  expression,  too  tame  and  trite  in  imagery,  too  clumsy  in 
characterization,  too  lacking  in  dramatic  fitness,  in  a  word 
too  uninspired,  to  pass  unsuspected.  Such  work  makes  up 
about  one-third  of  the  play;  scattered  through  it  in  some  ten 
scenes  or  parts  of   scenes.     One  or  two  of  them,   if  short. 


'JS 


might  make  no  great  iliflforencc,  tlunii^li  tluv  would  hi-  noticed; 
ten  together,  many  of  them  long,  comprise  perhaps  more  third- 
rate  poetry  than  can  he  found  in  any  other  play  in  the  Shak- 
sperean  canon.  Titus  .htdrotiicus  may  shed  more  hlood  tlian 
honors  Shakspere ;  its  poetry  is  ahove  comparison  with  most 
of  the  had  poetry  in  Timoii — and  is  less  peculiar.  Ilciiry  the 
Sixth  may  he  the  work  of  several  authors;  if  so.  each  of  them 
not  only  outwrote  the  man  who  supplied  the  inferior  parts  of 
Timon,  but  each  wrote  less  peculiarly — all  of  them  writing  a 
good  deal  like  Shakspere  in  his  early  period.  Henry  the  Eighth 
may  well  be  largely  Fletcher's ;  but  the  very  doubt  of  the  fact, 
if  any  exists,  is  caused  by  the  practical  equality  in  merit  of 
much  of  Fletcher's  work  in  it  to  much  of  Shakspere's.  The 
case  in  Pericles  is  likest  that  in  Timon.  Two  acts  there  are 
decidedly  inferior  to  Shakspere,  and  are  also  couched  in  verse 
decidedly  peculiar.  Yet  even  these  are  superior  in  quality  and 
less  singular  in  form  than  the  condemned  passages  in  Timon. 
The  word  "  peculiar "  leads  to  a  discussion  of  the  technic 
of  those  passages ;  and  the  examples  quoted  here  to  show^  their 
esthetic  quality  may  well  be  chosen  also  with  an  eye  upon  their 
technical  characteristics.  The  double  aim  makes  it  impos- 
sible to  distort  the  case  by  quoting  the  worst.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  first  and  last  quotations  are  taken  from  the  most 
ambitious  of  all  the  suspected  scenes ;  and  the  other  is  an  as- 
piring passage.  All  may  be  read  with  some  attention  to  the 
technic,  a  discussion  of  which  will  succeed  them.  The  curious 
shifts  from  prose  to  verse,  especially,  are  to  be  noted  in  the 
first  quotation  ;  the  rimes  and  the  irregular  lines  in  the  next ; 
while  the  last  is  nothing  but  a  set  of  separate  lines,  all  chosen 
from  one  scene,  where  each  serves,  let  it  be  said,  for  a  blank 
verse. 

"  Apemantus.  I  scorn  thy  meat ;  'twould  choke  me,  for  I  should  ne'er 
flatter  thee.  O  you  gods!  What  a  number  of  men  eats  Timon,  and  he 
sees  'em  not.  It  grieves  me  to  see  so  many  dip  their  meat  in  one  man's 
blood ;   and  all  the  madness  is,  he  cheers  'em  up  too. 

I   wonder  men   dare  trust   themselves  with  men. 

Methinks  they  should  invite  them  without  knives ; 

Good  for  their  meat,  and  safer  for  their  lives. 


29 

There's  much  example  for't ;  the  fellow  that  sits  next  him  now,  parts 
bread  with  him,  pledges  the  breath  of  him  in  a  divided  draught,  is  the 
readiest  man  to  kill  him  ;  't  has  been  proved.  If  I  were  a  huge  man,  1 
should  fear  to  drink  at  meals, 

Lest  they  should  spy  my  wind-pipe's  dangerous  notes ; 
Great  men  should  drink  with  harness  on  their  throats. 
Timon,     My   lord,    in    heart,   and   let    the   health   go    round. 
Second  Lord.     Let  it  flow  this  way,  my  good  lord. 

Apem.     Flow    this    way !     A    brave    fellow !     He    keeps    his    tides    well. 
Those  healths  will  make  thee  and  thy  state  look  ill,  Timon. 
Here's  that  which  is  too  weak  to  be  a  sinner. 
Honest  water,  which  ne'er  left  man  in  the  mire  : 
This  and  my  food  are  equals,  there's  no  odds. 
Feasts  are  too  proud  to  give  thanks  to   the  gods." 

I,  ii,  38. 

"  O,  the  fierce  wretchedness  that  glory  brings  us ! 
Who  would  not  wish  to  be  from  wealth  exempt. 
Since  riches  point  to  misery  and  contempt? 
Who   would  be   so    mock'd   with   glory?   or   to   live 
But  in  a  dream  of  friendship? 

To   have   his  pomp   and   all   what  state   compounds 
But  only  painted,  like  his  varnish'd  friends? 
Poor  honest  lord,  brought  low  by  his  own  heart. 
Undone  by  goodness  !      Strange  unusual  blood. 
When  man's  worst  sin  is,  he  does  too  much  good! 
My  dearest  lord,  blest  to  be  most  accurst. 
Rich  only  to  be  wretched,  thy  great  fortunes 
Are  made  thy  chief  afflictions.     Alas,  kind  lord ! 
He's  flung  in   rage  from  this  ingrateful  seat 
Of  monstrous  friends  ; 
Nor  has  he  with  him  to   supply  his  life, 
Or  that  which  can  command  it. 
I'll  follow  and  inquire  him  out : 
I'll  ever  serve  his  mind  with  my  best  will  ; 
Whilst  I  have  gold,   I'll  be  his  steward  still."     IV,  ii,  30. 

"It  has  pleas'd  the  gods  to  remember  my   father's  age"   I,   ii 2 

"  If  our  betters  play  at  that  game,  we  must  not  dare  " 12 

"  Nay,  my  lords,  ceremony  was  but  devised  at  first  " 14 

"  I  have  one  word  to  say  to  you.     Look  you,  my  good  lord  " 1 74 

"I   prithee,  let's  be  provided  to   show   them  entertainment" 185 

"  And   call    him    to    long   peace "    3 

"  But   yond    man    is    ever   angry  " 29 

"  They   dance  ;    they   are   mad   women  " 138 


30 

"  With   poisonous   spite   and    envy  "    i44 

■'  Of    their    friends'    Rxit" 1 47 

"  O,    that    men's    ears    should    be " 256 

The  first  oi  those  quotations  was  written  to  cxixise  the 
characters  of  Timon  and  his  parasites;  contrast  it  willi  tlic 
piece  from  Shaksperc's  exposition.  The  second  was  intended 
to  he  passionate  denunciation  of  tlie  parasites  and  of  the  world  ; 
contrast  this  with  tlie  tliunderings  quoted  from  Shakspere.  It 
might  be  jxissible  that  Shakspere  would  somewhere  write  a 
piece  of  patchwork  like  the  first  quotation  ;  it  may  be  pos- 
sible that  on  some  few  occasions  he  came  as  short  of  genuine 
passion  as  the  second ;  it  may  be  that  he  is  sometimes  guilty 
of  verses  as  ill-shaped  as  the  third ;  but  it  takes  a  high  order 
of  credulity  to  believe  that  at  the  time  of  Lear  and  Macbeth 
he  wrote  copious  quantities  of  such  stufY — filled  up  one-third 
of  a  play  with  it.  Nor  is  this  all.  The  technic  of  the  faulty 
passages,  that  unconscious  signature  of  authorship,  aptly  illus- 
trated in  the  extracts  quoted,  is  irreconcilable  with  Shak- 
sperc's technic  at  any  time.  Frequent  and  useless  shifts  from 
prose  to  verse  were  never  part  of  Shakspere's  practice ;  irregu- 
lar verse  was  always  scarce  with  him ;  and  by  the  period  of 
Timon  he  had  all  but  discarded  rime.  But  just  these  features 
which  \ve  should  perhaps  least  expect  to  find  in  Shakspere  at 
this  period  are  the  ones  we  find  most  prominent  in  our  quota- 
tions and  in  the  inferior  passages  throughout  the  play.  We 
can  only  take  them  as  the  ear-marks  of  another  author.  We 
shall  find  he  has  still  other  ear-marks  when  we  later  come  to 
tabulate  the  metrical  phenomena  for  all  the  scenes  of  the  play. 
Certain  striking  facts,  however,  may  be  borrowed  from  the 
table  and  placed  here  as  criteria  of  his  work. 

Twenty  per  cent,  of  his  verses  rime.  The  ratio  is  prac- 
tically constant  with  him;  and  the  rimes  are  scattered  indis- 
criminately through  his  scenes.  Shakspere  has  only  four  per 
cent,  of  rimes  and  almost  all  of  these  at  ends  of  scenes.  Leave 
out  such  final  couplets,  which  both  writers  use,  and  we  have 
still  a  fairer  test.  The  inferior  author  then  has  eighteen  per 
cent,  of  rimes,  Shakspere  less  than  one  per  cent.  A  prac- 
tically constant  ratio  of  eighteen  to  one  in  rimes  is  as  keen  a 


31 

verse-test  as  is  often  offered  by  the  two  parts  of  a  doubtful 
play. 

Timon,  however,  gives  us  another  test  as  clean-cut.  Irreg- 
ular lines  like  those  that  have  been  quoted  pervade  the  sus- 
pected verse  of  the  play.  They  may  be  roughly  classified ; 
lines  with  about  ten  syllables,  unscannable ;  rather  more  with 
twelve  or  fourteen  syllables,  sometimes  scannable  and  some- 
times not;  and  still  more  with  six,  seven,  or  eight  syllables, 
scannable  or  not.  These  are  the  inferior  author's  specialties 
when  he  fails  to  hit  upon  an  orthodox  line ;  and  he  fails  nearly 
one  time  in  five.  Shakspere  was  capable  of  such  distortions 
on  occasion;  in  Timon  he  has  four  per  cent,  of  them.  The 
other  author  has  eighteen  per  cent. ;  and  this  ratio,  throughout 
his  verse,  is  also  practically  constant. 

Yet  another  mark  of  the  inferior  author  is  found  in  quick 
and  aimless  shifts  from  prose  to  verse,  as  illustrated  in  the 
first  quotation ;  usually  not  even  due,  as  in  that  excerpt,  to  a 
desire  to  rime.  This  trait,  however,  unlike  the  first  two,  is 
not  constant.  It  is  very  prominent  in  several  of  this  author's 
scenes,  and  in  none  not  his ;  but  in  others  he  writes  solid  verse 
or  solid  prose. 

We  have  considered  only  a  few  illustrations  of  the  esthetic 
and  the  technical  contrast  between  different  parts  of  our  play. 
The  esthetic  contrast  will  be  heightened  as  we  look  at  indi- 
vidual scenes ;  and  further  metrical  phenomena,  all  showing 
differences,  though  not  so  marked,  will  appear  in  the  table. 
We  may  leave  the  evidence  of  the  third  kind,  those  curious 
divergences  in  treatment  and  contradictions  in  substance  which 
in  this  play  often  give  the  most  concrete  testimony  to  double 
authorship,  to  appear  in  their  natural  places  in  the  following 
chapters.  We  have  perhaps  found  sufficient  reason  for  be- 
lieving in  two  authors.  If  so,  we  have  already  valuable 
tests  to  aid  us  in  distinguishing  their  work :  strong  esthetic 
evidence  in  almost  every  scene ;  a  practically  constant  ratio  of 
1 8  to  I  in  rimes  between  the  authors,  and  of  1 8  to  4  in  irreg- 
ular lines;  and  a  further,  though  not  constant,  mark  of  the 
inferior  author  in  a  tendency  to  jumble  prose  and  verse.  The 
tests  will  not  be  all-sufficient.     We  may  expect  to  find  some 


scones  in  prose,  where  tlu-  verse-tests  will  not  apply,  ami 
where  the  pure  esthetic  eviik-nce  will  also  be  too  weak  to  be 
conchisive.  \\*e  shall  come  to  practical  clecisi<in  on  most 
scenes;  but  only  to  a  probability  on  several  otlurs;  and  on  two, 
hardly  to  that.  We  shall  nei-il  furtlu-r  eviiknce  than  that  of 
style  and  meter  to  confirm  the  decisions  and  to  streni^then  tlic 
probabihties ;  ami  this  we  shall  kx)k  for  in  another  chai)ter. 

Our  first  problem  now  is,  tiierefore,  to  distribute  the  dis- 
jecta membra  of  the  play  between  the  authors.  Our  next 
will  be  to  find  out  which  were  written  first — whether  Shak- 
spere  partially  recast  an  older  piece,  and.  leaving  patches  from 
it.  made  up  the  misshapen  play  as  printed,  or  whether  he  wrote 
the  original  play  in  which  those  patches  are  interpolations. 
If  we  find  that  Shakspere  wrote  the  original  play,  wc  shall 
have  to  ask  how  near  he  came  to  finishing  it,  and  how  the  play, 
if  finished  as  he  planned  it,  would  diflfer  from  the  play  as 
actually  finished  by  another.  Speaking  somewhat  roughly, 
the  three  questions  furnish  the  respective  topics  of  the  next 
three  chapters.  This  chapter  henceforth  attempts  merely  to 
divide  the  play  between  the  authors.  To  some  extent  it  must 
be  taken  as  preHminary;  because,  as  said  above,  not  all  the 
evidence  is  brought  to  bear  in  it.  Confirmatory  evidence  will 
come  conveniently  in  the  next  chapter,  being  incidental  to  the 
argument  for  Shakspere's  priority.  The  last  chapter  will  then 
restore,  so  far  as  possible,  the  plot  that  Shakspere  planned.^ 

I,  i,  1-175 
No  doubt  has  ever  been  expressed  that  the  opening  of  the 
play,  from  the  dialogue  of  the  parasites  through  the  redemp- 
tion of  Ventidius  and  the  complaint  of  the  Old  Athenian,  is 
Shakspere's  work.  One  need  not  say  the  passages  are  un- 
mistakably Shaksperean.  In  quoting  from  one  of  them  a 
while  ago,  we  implied  that  if  we  were  comparing  them  with 
such  verse  as  a  man  like  Fletcher,  for  example,  often  writes, 
we  might  have  considerable  esthetic  ground  for  doubt.     But 

'  One  word  of  caution  is  advisable.  The  text  of  the  First  Folio  is  the 
sole  authority  for  our  play.  It  will  Ije  useful  at  many  points  in  the 
argument  that  follows,  and  at  one  or  two  imperative.  In  all  references  to 
individual  lines,  the  numbering  of  the  Globe  Edition  is  taken  as  a  standard. 


33 

we  are  comparing  them  with  the  work  of  a  man  who  was  by 
no  means  a  Fletcher,  as  we  have  seen  and  shall  see  again ; 
and  thus  compared,  the  skill  of  the  expository  dialogue,  the 
nice  discrimination  of  the  characters,  and  especially  the  rare 
quality  of  the  copious  and  involved  imagery,  suggest  no  hand 
but  Shakspere's ;  while  the  orderly  technic  of  the  verse,  lack- 
ing all  the  distortions  constant  with  the  other  author,  seems 
to  speak  definitively.  More  cannot  be  said  at  present ;  there 
is  little  need,  however,  to  enlarge  the  stylistic  argument  for 
an  ascription  that  is  undisputed.- 

176-293 
In  part,  the  last  half  of  the  scene,  where  Apemantus  holds 
the  boards,  is  one  of  the  two  passages  in  the  play  on  which 
esthetic  evidence  must  leave  us  genuinely  doubtful.  Only  a 
probability,  gained  by  balancing  the  evidence,  can  be  stated. 
It  would  seem  that  Shakspere  was  making  ready,  in  describing 
Apemantus  a  hundred  lines  back,^  to  introduce  him  in  the 
scene.  One  is  therefore  prepared  to  take  the  entrance  of  the 
cynic,  even  though  the  latter  fails  to  "  drop  down  the  knee  " 
to  Timon,  as  was  said  to  be  his  wont,  as  Shakspere's  work. 
So  far  most  of  the  critics  are  agreed.  But  many  of  them 
follow  Mr.  Fleay  in  giving  Shakspere  only  the  first  ten  lines 
after  Apemantus'  entrance ;  and  think  the  other  author  wrote 
the   sixty  lines  thence   following  till  Alcibiades   enters.     Mr. 

^  A  mercer  who  enters  with  the  other  parasites,  according  to  the  stage- 
direction,  but  who  never  speaks,  has  called  forth  much  comment  but  no 
explanation.  The  mention  of  him  has  been  used  as  evidence  that  Shakspere 
here  revised  an  old  scene  in  which  the  mercer  had  a  speaking  part;  and 
coming  in  the  first  line  of  the  play,  has  predisposed  some  critics  to  the 
theory  that  Shakspere  was  revising  throughout.  If  that  theory  is  shown 
impossible— and  little  further  evidence  shall  we  find  for  it — this  explana- 
tion of  the  mercer  falls.  So  do  all  others.  The  last  author,  whichever 
one  he  was,  does  not  seem  to  have  added  the  mercer  in  the  stage-direction, 
meaning  to  give  him  a  part,  for  he  gave  him  none  ;  or  to  have  cut  any 
part  that  the  first  author  had  already  given  the  mercer,  for  no  cut  is 
apparent.  Nor  is  the  error  very  like  a  printer's.  The  important  fact  here 
is  that  the  mercer — explain  him  who  can — does  not  testify  to  any  theory 
of   authorship. 

'Line  59. 
4 


•:a 

Fleay  so  argues  because  the  first  ten  lines  are  verse,  the 
others  prose;  because  the  "bald"  and  "cut-up"  style  of  the 
prose  is  like  that  of  two  later  Apcniantus  scenes  known  to  be 
non-Shaksperean  ;*  and  because  the  speeches  of  tlu-  various 
characters  in  the  prose  are  unlike  their  speeches  elsewhere  in 
the  play.  One  feels  these  reasons  to  be  inconclusive.  The 
change  from  verse  to  prose — definitive,  and  by  no  means  like 
the  uncertain  vacillations  of  the  inferior  author  into  and  out 
of  meter — may  very  well  prove  nothing  but  that  prose  is  the 
natural,  almost  the  only  suitable,  medium  for  Apemantus' 
brand  of  sarcasm.  The  balder  this  is,  the  better  it  suits  Ape- 
mantus ;  its  "  cut-up  "  nature  is  its  merit ;  and  the  fact  that  two 
later  spurious  scenes  have  much  the  same  style — though  not 
half  so  pointed — may  mean  only  that  one  author  imitated  the 
other  in  imitating  Lyly's  Diogenes.  As  for  any  change  in  the 
characters  where  the  prose  begins,  it  remains  to  be  shown. 
Timon's  attitude  to  Apemantus,  admirably  suited  to  complete 
the  exposition  of  the  hero's  character,  is  that  of  noblesse 
oblige;  and  the  scorn  of  the  rest  for  the  cynic  is  natural 
enough.  There  is  no  great  reason,  then,  to  think  that  Shak- 
spere  stopped  when  he  had  written  the  first  ten  lines,  in  verse. 
Hardly  could  he  possibly  have  stopped  with  them;  for  if  we 
agree  that  he  wrote  those  ten,  letting  Timon  warn  his  friends 
that  they  w'ill  "  be  chid  "  by  Apemantus,  we  have  every  reason 
to  believe  he  wrote  the  clever  chiding  that  ensues. 

When  Alcibiades  enters,  verse  begins  again  and  lasts  for 
fifteen  Hues — until  the  company  adjourn  to  dinner.  One  can 
hardly  doubt  that  Mr.  Fleay  and  his  school  are  right  in  giving 
these  lines  to  Shakspere.  We  may  note  that  in  them  Apeman- 
tus again  speaks,  and  speaks  in  verse  Shaksperean  through  and 
through : 

"Aches  contract  and  starve  your  supple  joints! 
That  there  should  be  small  love  'mongst  these  swreet  knaves. 
And  all  this  courtesy !     The  strain  of  man's  bred  out 
Into  baboon  and  monkey."  I,  i,  257. 

Such  a  speech  is  valiant  evidence  that  Shakspere  had  Ape- 

*  I,  ii  ;  II,  ii,  47-132. 


36 

mantus  in  his  scene.  But  now,  as  the  guests  go  in  to  dinner, 
a  stage-direction  says,  "  Enter  tzvo  Lords/'  These  talk  with 
Apemantus  for  eighteen  hnes  in  prose,  then  with  each  other 
for  ten  more  in  verse,  and  go  in.  Bent  on  giving  all  the  prose 
to  the  inferior  author,  Mr.  Fleay  is  driven  to  the  argument 
that  that  author  kept  back  the  two  lords  when  the  other  guests 
went  in  to  the  feast ;  that  he  kept  them  back  to  close  the  scene 
by  baiting  Apemantus,  in  order  that  Apemantus  might  enter 
in  the  next  scene  "  dropping  after  all,  discontentedly,  like  him- 
self," as  the  stage-direction  there  has  it.  Now  the  statement 
that  the  author  kept  back  the  two  lords  is  simply  in  defiance 
of  the  text,  which  makes  them  enter;  and  the  reader  may  be 
left  to  judge  whether  Apemantus'  mode  of  dropping  into  the 
next  scene  is  in  any  way  conditioned  by  the  way  in  which  he 
drops  out  of  this  one.  If  not,  there  is  no  valid  reason  to 
doubt  Shakspere's  hand  in  the  closing  passage  of  the  scene. 

Thus  the  evidences  balance.  They  lean  to  Shakspere's  side 
— create  a  probability,  at  least,  that  Shakspere  is  responsible 
for  all  that  Apemantus  says  and  does  in  the  first  scene.  Only 
a  probability,  however;  they  cannot  be  said  to  determine  the 
fact.  The  last  half  of  our  first  scene  must  therefore  be  left 
open  to  some  question. 

I,  ii 

It  is  easy  to  account  for  the  unanimous  opinion  of  the 
critics  that  the  banquet  scene  is  the  inferior  author's.  The 
prose  and  verse  of  the  scene,  often  indistinguishable,  are  alike 
vapid.  The  latter  shows  no  sign  of  Shakspere's  technic,  but 
abounds  with  the  metrical  shortcomings  of  the  other  writer. 
The  frequency  of  these  approximates  his  constant  ratio;  a 
fifth  of  the  verses  rime,  a  sixth  betray  his  regular  irregular- 
ities. The  whole  scene  should  be  read  to  get  an  idea  of  his 
strange  technic.  Illustration  is  unnecessary  here,  as  we  have 
already  quoted  much  from  the  scene  in  the  introduction  to  this 
chapter.  Grant  that  Shakspere  might  write  one  such  passage 
as  the  first  there  quoted ;  grant  that  here  and  there  he  may  be 
guilty  of  a  line  as  halting  as  the  last  quotations;  that  he  would 
habitually  write  such  passages  and  such  lines  is  beyond  belief. 


Hut  with  the  other  autlior  such  hiios  arc  hahitual.  Not  only 
in  this  scene,  but  wherever  lie  writes  verse,  he  sprinkles  a 
steady  twenty  per  cent,  of  them. 

Cither  facts  are  even  more  tellinj;.  The  scene  is  full  of 
hhnulers.  Vcntidius  is  allowed  to  offer  the  return  of  Titnon's 
loan  and  so  largjely  to  destroy  the  dramatic  force  of  Timon's 
later  request  for  payment.  The  steward  is  given  a  name 
(  Flavins)  not  his.  These  facts  will  call  for  fuller  comment 
later.  Although  the  steward  is  to  be  the  only  faithful  fol- 
lower of  Timon's  miseries,  he  is  made  to  wish  "  he  were 
gently  put  out  of  office  before  he  were  forced  out."''  Timon 
starts  to  make  a  gift  to  Alcibiades  but  stops  short  for  no 
reason."  Senators  are  announced  who  never  enter.''  And 
through  it  all  the  plot  is  at  a  standstill.  When  these  blunders 
have  been  told,  the  low  poetic  level  of  the  scene  needs  little 
comment.  Suffice  it  to  say  here  that  the  blunders  are  con- 
veyed in  a  scene  which,  even  as  reformed  by  modern  editors, 
staggers  aimlessly  from  prose  to  verse,  from  verse  back  to 
prose,  sixteen  times  in  257  lines.  Such  substance,  in  such 
style,  under  such  technic, — though  easily  paralleled,  as  we  shall 
find,  in  several  of  this  author's  scenes, — Shakspere  never 
wrote. 

II,  i 
After  the  lapse  of  the  plot  through  the  dead  waste  of  the 
banquet  scene,  one  is  relieved  to  come  to  its  resumption  in  the 
little  scene  that  follows.  The  solidity  and  dignity,  yet  delicacy, 
of  the  thought  and  verse  alike,  unmarred  by  metrical  deform- 
ity, the  unerring  stroke  of  every  sentence,  driven  home  with 
telling  phrases  and  with  striking  images,  leave  no  doubt  of  the 
author  of  the  scene.  One  feels  it  to  be  as  characteristically 
Shaksperean,  perhaps,  as  any  passage  in  the  play ;  and  as 
masterful  as  any  except  those  in  which  a  storm  of  passion 
makes  the  lightning  play.  Quotation  of  half  the  scene  will 
best  evince  the  fact. 

"  Get  on  your  cloak,  and  haste  you  to  Lord  Timon. 
Importune  him  for  my  moneys ;  be  not  ceas'd 

*  Line  207.  'Line  227.  'Line   180. 


37 

With  slight  denial,  nor  then  silenc'd  when 

'  Commend  me  to  your  master,'  and  the  cap 

Plays  in  the  right  hand,  thus  ;  but  tell  him, 

My  uses  cry  to  me ;  I  must  serve  my  turn 

Out  of  mine  own  ;  his  days  and  times  are  past, 

And  my  reliances  on  his  fracted  dates 

Have  smit  my  credit.     I   love  and  honour  him, 

But  must  not  break  by  back  to  heal  his  finger. 

Immediate  are  my  needs,  and  my  relief 

Must  not  be  toss'd  and  turn'd  to  me  in  words, 

But  find  supply  immediate.     Get  you  gone. 

Put  on  a  most  importunate  aspect, 

A  visage  of  demand  ;  for  I  do  fear, 

When   every   feather   sticks   in   his   own   wing, 

Lord  Timon  will  be  left  a  naked  gull, 

Which  flashes  now  a  phoenix.     Get  you  gone." 

11,  i,  15. 

II,  ii 
This  scene  falls  naturally  into  the  three  parts  in  which  it 
is  here  examined.     The  dunning  part  runs  through  line  46; 
the  foolery  of  Apemantus  thence  through  line   132;  and  the 
conference  of  Timon  with  the  steward  fills  the  rest. 

The  Dunning 
There  is  every  reason  to  accept  the  usual  ascription  of  the 
dunning  scene  to  Shakspere.  We  have  just  seen  him  pre- 
paring for  it  in  the  scene  preceding;  and  in  the  conference  of 
Timon  with  the  steward,  and  indeed  throughout  the  play, 
we  shall  find  him  presupposing  that  it  has  been  shown.  We 
should  therefore  naturally  think  he  wrote  it.  The  style  and 
meter  bespeak  his  hand.  For  while  the  short  dialogue  may 
not  be  inevitably  Shaksperean,  as  would  hardly  be  expected 
in  a  few  short  speeches,  it  is  skilful  enough  for  Shakspere,  and 
at  least  more  graphic  than  the  other  author's  average ;  and 
the  meter,  disturbed  but  slightly  by  the  broken  nature  of  the 
dialogue,  shows  the  regular  technic  of  Shakspere  and  lacks 
the  derangements  of  the  other  man.  But  we  do  not  have  to 
rest  on  evidence  as  slight  as  style  and  meter  here  afford.  The 
crowning  proof  that  Shakspere  wrote  the  dunning  part  lies  in 
the  fact  that  it  cannot  have  been  written  by  the  man  who  wrote 


38 

the  Aponiantus  part  tliat  k)llo\vs  it,  ami  that  this  m;m  was  the 
other  author — as  will  now  he  shown. 

The  .1  f'ciiuvitns  Piirt 

The  man  who  wrote  clown  to  line  47  sent  iho  duns  olT  the 
stage  at  that  piMtit.  lie  made  the  steward  heg  them  to  retire 
till  after  dinner  that  Tinion  might  prepare  an  answer  for  them. 
He  made  Timon  second  this  request  and  hid  the  steward  see 
them  well  entertained  during  dinner.  He  made  them  start 
off  when  the  steward  bade  them,  "  Pray,  draw  near."  Rut 
just  as  they  are  going  off — at  line  47 — one  of  them  sees  Apc- 
mantus  coming  and  cries  out,  "  Stay,  Stay !  "  And  stay  they 
do.  The  steward  who  was  leading  them  gets  off  as  best  he 
can  in  silence,  but  they  remain  for  eighty-five  lines  of  fun 
with  Apemantus.  No  single  author  would  have  made  this 
error;  would  have  started  the  servants  off  the  stage,  if  all  the 
while  he  meant  them  to  remain.  Clearly  it  was  one  writer 
who  sent  them  off,  another  who  made  them  turn  and  stay  for 
sport  with  Apemantus. 

That  the  latter  was  the  anonymous  author  is  not  doubted. 
As  he  wrote  in  prose  here,  we  cannot  apply  the  ear-marks  that 
we  always  find  to  stamp  his  verse.  But  his  blunders  tell.  He 
mistakes  the  duns,  one  at  least  of  whom,  in  Shakspere,  serves 
a  senator,  for  "  three  usurers'  men."*  He  seemingly  forgets 
that  the  scene  is  placed  in  Timon's  house,  for  he  makes  Ape- 
mantus tell  his  companion  that  he  "  will  go  with  him  to  Lord 
Timon's.""  Much  worse,  the  author  finds  it  needful,  while 
he  holds  the  plot  at  halt,  to  bring  on  an  unknown  fool  and 
an  unknown  page,  with  letters  of  unknown  purport  to  Timon 
and  to  Alcibiades.  These  blunders  have  never  been  thought 
Shakspere's. 

The  Conference  zvith  the  Stezvard 
Only  ten  lines  in  this  part  abide  our  question.     The   rest 
is  Shakspere  palpably — his  zenith   for  the  first  half  of  the 
play.     Let  quotation  tell. 

•Compare  II,  i,  with  II,  ii,  61,  98,  and  loi. 
•II,  ii,  94. 


39 

"  When  all  our  offices  have  been  oppress'd 
With  riotous  feeders,  when  our  vaults  have  wept 
With  drunken  spilth  of  wine,  when  every  room 
Hath  blaz'd  with  lights  and  bray'd  with  minstrelsy, 
I  have  retir'd  me  to  a  wasteful  cock, 
And  set  mine   eyes   at  flow. 

Heavens,  have  I  said,  the  bounty  of  this  lord !  , 

How  many  prodigal  bits  have  slaves  and  peasants 

This  night  englutted  ?     Who  is  not  Timon's  ? 

What  heart,  head,  sword,  force,  means,  but  is  Lord  Timon's  ? 

Great  Timon,  noble,  worthy,  royal  Timon ! 

Ah,  when  the  means  are  gone  that  buy  this  praise, 

The  breath  is  gone  whereof  this  praise  is  made. 

Feast-won,  fast-lost ;  one  cloud  of  winter  showers. 

These  flies  are  couch'd."  II,   ii,    167. 

But  ten  prose  lines  that  suddenly  break  into  this  poetry  at 
line  195  are  open  to  debate.  Without  exception,  critics  give 
these  lines  to  the  inferior  author;  and  the  ascription  is  in- 
deed a  natural  one,  since  the  singular  intrusion  of  a  bit  of 
prose  at  such  a  point  has  every  semblance  of  interpolation. 
The  present  argument,  however,  will  depart  from  the  accepted 
belief  that  the  ten  lines  are  spurious;  in  fact,  the  very  key- 
stone of  the  argument  will  be  a  theory  that  all  but  one  of  them 
belong  to  Shakspere.  Such  a  theory  may  well  seem  trivial  at 
first  thought ;  but  that  the  theory,  by  accident,  must  hold  a 
more  important  place  in  our  argument  than  the  lines  them- 
selves hold  in  the  play  will  perhaps  be  apparent  when  we  come 
to  discuss  the  matter  in  the  next  chapter. 

Ill,  i 
Something  of  the  importance  of  that  theory,  indeed,  will  be 
at  once  appreciated  from  the  fact  that  the  three  scenes  which 
follow  are  inseparably  bound  up  with  the  ten  prose  lines  just 
mentioned.  In  those  lines  Timon  sends  to  borrow  of  three 
friends — Lucius,  Lucullus,  and  Sempronius ;  and  the  three 
scenes  ensuing  show  those  lords  denying  the  requests.  A 
purely  esthetic  judgment  as  to  the  first  two  of  the  three 
scenes — although,  as  the  scenes  are  mainly  prose,  it  will  not 
be  conclusive — indicates  that  Shakspere  wrote  them ;  but  an 


40 

esthetic  ami  technical  jiulgniH-iit  as  to  tlir  third  socno,  which 
is  mainly  in  had  verse,  points  to  the  other  author.  In  the 
present  scene,  for  instance,  that  of  Lucullus,  the  dialogue  is 
dexterous  enough,  the  character-delineation  suhtle  enough,  the 
prose  facile  enough,  for  Shakspcre ;  while  the  one  speech  in 
verse  seems  characteristic  of  him.  And  so.  also,  in  the  Lucius 
scene.  But  the  Sempronius  scene  we  shall  find  ditlerent; 
and  its  metrical  tricks  alone  W'ill  show  ahundant  indications  of 
the  other  author. 

On  account  of  a  logical  necessity,  however,  which  arises 
from  the  relation  of  the  three  scenes  to  the  ten  prose  lines 
aforesaid,  and  almost  on  that  account  alone,  the  critics  who 
have  followed  Mr.  Fleay  have  found  themselves  forced  to 
give  all  three  scenes  to  the  inferior  author.  If  the  ten  lines 
are  interpolated,  then  the  three  scenes  must  be  interpolated 
also.  That  fact  will  be  apparent.  Many  critics  have  wanted 
to  rebel,  indeed,  against  the  logic;  some  for  the  esthetic  reasons 
mentioned  in  the  last  paragraph,  others  because  these  scenes 
where  Timon's  friends  deny  him  are  so  absolutely  essential  to 
the  play  that  Shakspere  could  not  in  reason  have  omitted  them. 
Thus  Dr.  Furnivall,  the  first  critic  of  Mr.  Fleay's  paper  i^"  "  I 
cannot  believe  that  Shakspere  would  make  the  ingratitude  of 
one  man  [\'entidius — w'hose  ingratitude  is  not  shown]  the  sole 
cause  of  Timon's  entire  change  of  character;  and  I  therefore 
believe  that  Shakspere  wrote  those  few  prose  words  ordering 
the  servants  to  go  to  Lucius  and  Lucullus  (and  possibly  to 
Sempronius)."  Note  well  that  Sempronius  is  left  doubtful ;  and 
then  note  how,  for  other  reasons,  and  even  inadvertently,  he  is 
again  left  doubtful  by  Mr.  K.  Deighton:^^  "Though  there 
is  perhaps  nothing  in  the  verse  [of  the  three  scenes]  that 
might  not  have  been  written  by  an  inferior  poet,  there  is  in  the 
prose,  to  my  ear  and  mind,  a  great  deal  that  has  the  genuine 
ring  of  Shakspere."  Now  the  prose  is  in  the  Lucius  and 
Lucullus  scenes;  the  verse  is  found  in  the  Sempronius  scene; 
so  that  while  Mr.  Deighton  was  here  arguing  that  all  three 
scenes  are   Shakspere's,   his   sentence   unintentionally   testifies 

"New  Shakspere  Society  Transactions,  1874,  page  243. 
"  The  Ardcn   Timon,  page  xviii. 


41 

to  our  theory  that  only  the  first  two  are  so  ascribable.  "  The 
details  of  the  scenes,"  says  the  same  editor,  "  have  an  air  of 
vra\semhlance,  there  is  abundance  of  humor  in  the  excuses 
made,  and  the  character  of  the  sycophants  is  skilfully  discrim- 
inaied;"  and  furthermore,  like  Dr.  Furnivall,  he  "cannot 
conceive  Shakspere  as  a  dramatic  artist  showing  us  Timon 
turned  bitter  misanthrope  without  also  showing  in  detail  the 
process  which  caused  the  sudden  revulsion." 

This  critic,  following  Dr.  Furnivall,  is  alone  in  his  ascription 
of  the  scenes  to  Shakspere;  and  he  gives  all  three  of  them 
to  Shakspere,  and  in  spite  of  logic.  For  the  logical  necessity 
above-mentioned  forces  all  the  other  followers  of  Mr.  Fleay, 
though  sometimes  unwillingly,  to  ascribe  the  scenes  to  the 
inferior  author.  To  dispel  that  logical  necessity,  or  rather  so  to 
interpret  it  as  to  make  it  reinforce  the  esthetic  judgment  that 
the  first  two  scenes  are  Shakspere's  and  the  third  one  only 
the  inferior  author's,  will  be  part  of  our  task  in  the  next 
chapter.  It  is  well  to  know  that  the  esthetic  verdict  clears  the 
way  for  the  attempt. 

Ill,  ii 

What  was  implied  of  this  scene  under  the  last  section  need 
not  be  repeated.  Good  enough  for  Shakspere,  the  scene  has 
been  given  to  the  other  author  from  an  exigency  of  logic  which 
the  next  chapter  will  seek  to  dispel.^^ 

"  There  is  little  reason  for  agreeing  with  certain  critics  who  think  that 
the  "  three  strangers  "  whose  dialogue  opens  and  closes  the  scene  are  not 
Shakspere's  characters.  To  let  Lucius  boast  to  them  of  what  he  would 
do  for  Timon,  and  then  encounter  Timon's  request,  was  a  good  device ; 
and  in  the  body  of  the  scene,  which  we  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter 
Shakspere  must  have  written,  they  are  mentioned  as  having  been  present 
at  its  beginning :  "  I  was  sending,"  says  Lucius,  "  to  use  Lord  Timon  my- 
self, these  gentlemen  can  witness."  The  main  doubt  about  them  is  caused, 
however,  by  their  dialogue  at  the  end,  where  one  of  them  suddenly  gets  a 
name  (Hostilius),  and  where  six  lines  of  prose,  printed  as  verse,  are  fol- 
lowed by  eighteen  verses  which  show  some,  but  not  many,  of  the  inferior 
author's  tricks.  But  these  lines  have  Shaksperean  touches  too,  as  in  the 
sentence, 

"  He  ne'er  drinks 
But  Timon's  silver  treads  upon  his  lip, — " 
so  that  it  seems  unlikely  that  even  the  closing  dialogue  of  the  strangers 


42 

111.  iii 
If  the  Lucius  and  Lucullus  scenes  agree  in  style,  the  Seni- 
pronius  scene  is  widely  difYerent  from  both.  The  first  twc  arc 
mainly  in  gcxxl  prose,  the  last  in  very  ragged  verse — and  vjrse 
showing  the  inferior  author's  eccentricities  in  plenty.  From 
the  thirty-four  verses  of  this  scene  alone  we  could  make  an  in- 
ventory of  liis  metrical  anomalies.     Let  sample  lines  suffice. 

Line. 

"  Has   Vcntidius    and    Lucullus    denied    him  ?  " 8 

'"Must  I  be  his  last  refuge?     His  friends,  like  physicians" ii 

"  Thrice  give  him  over;  must  I  take  the  cure  upon  me?  " 12 

"  That   e'er   received   gift   from   him  " 17 

'That   I'll   requite  it  last?     No" 19 

'■  Now    to    guard    sure    their    master " 40 

Each  of  these  masquerades  as  a  blank  verse.  With  such 
blemishes  prevailing,  we  may  leave  to  the  table  the  other 
metrical  phenomena  which  help  to  stamp  the  scene  as  the 
inferior  author's.  And  that  same  logical  necessity,  moreover, 
which  will  give  the  two  preceding  scenes  to  Shakspere,  will 
force  this  one  on  the  other  man. 

is  spurious.  There  is  no  contradiction  in  their  professing  to  be  "  but 
strangers  "  to  Timon  in  line  2,  and  yet  seeming  to  know  a  good  deal  about 
him  in  the  rest  of  the  scene.  Their  plain  meaning  in  line  2  is  that  they 
are  not  personal  friends  of  Timon's,  like  Lucius ;  and  this  fact  one  of 
them  repeats  in  the  very  last  speech. 

Some  critics,  too,  have  made  capital  of  a  curious  blunder  in  the  scene. 
The  second  stranger  says  that  Timon's  man  has  asked  Lucullus  for  "  so 
many  talents."  (Timon  had  sent,  of  course,  for  fifty.)  Lucius,  replying, 
boasts  that  he  would  not  deny  Timon  "  so  many  talents."  Thereupon 
another  man  of  Timon's  enters  and  asks  Lucius  for  "  so  many  talents  "  ; 
and  Lucius  answers, 

"  I  know  his  lordship  is  but  merry  with  me ; 
He  cannot  want  fifty-five  hundred  talents." 
One  thing  is  fairly  sure  about  this  bungle.  Timon's  man  must  have  asked 
Lucius — as  the  line  was  written — for  fifty  talents ;  merely  because  the  reply 
of  Lucius — "  He  cannot  want  fifty-five  hundred  " — is  a  somewhat  natural 
reply  to  a  request  for  fifty,  and  a  virtually  impossible  reply  to  one  for 
"  so  many."  The  last  "  so  many,"  then, — the  one  that  makes  the  main 
confusion — was  almost  surely  written  "  fifty,"  and  is  only  a  corruption, 
evincing  nothing  as  to  authorship.  If  so,  the  first  two  may  well  be 
corruptions   also — probably   misprints. 


43 

III,  iv 

There  is  little  need,  if  any,  for  a  second  dunning  scene  in 
the  play.  It  is  therefore  hkely,  a  priori,  that  this  superfluous 
scene,  repeating  one  of  Shakspere's,  is  the  other  author's. 
Esthetically  it  is  on  the  latter's  plane.  When  not  positively 
silly,  the  style  is  mediocre ;  the  best  line  in  the  scene  would  not 
make  us  think  of  Shakspere.  The  verse,  as  in  the  banquet 
scene,  is  largely  indistinguishable  from  the  prose;  but  at  best 
it  alternates  with  prose,  on  an  average,  every  twenty  lines ;  and 
through  all  obstacles  it  shows  abundant  brands  of  the  inferior 
author  in  irregularities  and  rimes.  To  make  way  for  other 
evidence,  however,  the  phenomena  of  verse,  sufficient  in  them- 
selves to  show  the  authorship,  may  be  left  safely  to  the  table 
of  the  metrics. 

For  there  is  more  to  say.  Timon's  creditors  in  this  scene  are 
Varro,^^  Titus,  Hortensius,  Philotus,  and  Lucius.  Varro  we 
know  from  Shakspere's  dunning  scene.  Titus,  Hortensius, 
and  Philotus  never  appear  elsewhere.  Nor  is  this  fact  to  be 
dismissed  with  the  argument — which  would  be  weak  if  true — • 
that  they  are  nowhere  shown  because  they  are  mere  usurers. 
They  are  lords,  and  friends  of  Timon;  they  have  had  gifts 
from  him,  eaten  at  his  table,  "  spent  of  his  wealth."^'*  The 
fact  speaks  for  itself;  one  will  not  readily  believe  it  to  be 
Shakspere  who  here  shows  us  three  close  friends  of  Timon 
pestering  him  for  money  without  ever  having  introduced  those 
friends  to  us  before,  and  without  ever  mentioning  them  after- 
ward.    And  if  the  presence  of  three  unknown  creditors  were 

"  Only  their  servants,  of  course, — called,  as  in  Shakspere's  dunning 
scene,  by  their  masters'  names — appear  on  the  stage,  Varro  sends  two 
servants.  The  stage-direction,  "  Enter  Varro' s  man,"  is  a  misprint  for 
"  men."  For  in  the  first  lines  of  the  scene,  where  Lucius  says  his  business 
"  is  money,"  Titus  replies,  "  So  is  theirs  and  ours ; "  and  an  examina- 
tion of  the  lines  will  make  it  clear  that  "  ours "  must  mean  Titus'  and 
Hortensius',  and  that  therefore  "  theirs  "  must  indicate  two  men  of 
Varro's.  Otherwise  it  would  be  "  his."  This  minute  matter  is  worth 
noting  only  because  it  kills  the  theory  that  Varro's  man  is  doubled  only  in 
the  last  half  of  the  scene,  where  he  speaks — a  theory  which  has  sometimes 
caused   a   claim   for  two   authors   in   this   scene. 

"  Witness  lines  i8,   19,  2^,  26,  50. 


44 

not  conclusive,  the  ni^jH-aranco  of  another  one  named  Lueins 
would  Ik-  the  last  straw.  This  man  is  eitlier  meant  for  tlie 
same  Lucius  whom  both  writers  have  already  used,''*  or  for 
another.  If  the  same,  his  presence  here  cannot  he  Shakspere's 
work;  for  in  the  Lucius  scene,  the  next  but  one  preceding, 
Shakspere  certainly  hail  no  intent  of  making  Lucius  a  creditor 
of  Timon.  lUit  if  another,  he  cannot  be  Shakspere's  either; 
for  it  is  imiK>ssible  that  Shakspere  meant  to  give  Timon  two 
proteges  named  Lucius.  We  can  hardly  think  that  Shakspere 
either  contradicted  his  own  Lucius  out  and  out,  or  added  a 
second  Lucius  to  the  play;  but  we  shall  find  that  neither 
blunder  surpasses  some  feats  of  the  other  autlior  in  his  haste. 

in.  V 

Sundered  from  all  else  in  the  play,  this  scene  proclaims  itself 
spurious  by  its  very  insulation.  To  motivate  the  last  half  of 
the  play,  the  writer  must  get  Alcibiades  banished.  Let  us 
suppose  that  in  his  hurry  he  fell  in  with  the  first  plan  that 
occurred  to  him,  without  thinking  overmuch  how  well  or  ill 
that  plan  would  fit  the  play.  Let  us  even  assume  that  he  was 
none  too  familiar  with  the  play.  The  allowances  will  perhaps 
help  us  to  explain  why  he  makes  Alcibiades  anger  the  senate 
with  pleas  for  mercy  to  the  unknown  author  of  an  unknow-n 
crime ;  why  he  meanwhile  quite  forgets  the  play  on  which  he 
is  working,  and  writes  in  a  scene  w-hich  has  not  the  slightest 
reference  to  Timon  or  the  remotest  relation  to  anything  what- 
soever that  takes  place  in  the  half  of  the  play  preceding.  The 
introduction  of  a  crime  and  criminal,  both  alien  to  the  plot 
and  both  unheard  of  elsewhere  in  the  play,  to  motivate  a  scene 
which  has  so  little  relevancy  to  the  scenes  preceding  that  it 
might  as  well  have  come  from  Hamlet,  will  not  be  considered 
the  expedient  of  Shakspere.  The  technic  of  the  verse — to 
waive  the  mediocrity  of  style  as  patent — puts  the  authorship 
beyond  dispute.     Let  some  characteristic  lines  be  shown. 

Line. 

"  'Tis    necessary    he    should    die  " 2 

"  He    did    oppose    his    foe  " 20 

"Shakspere  in  III,  ii;  the  other  man  in  I,  ii,  187  ff. 


45 

"  To  bring  manslaughter  into  form  and  set  quarreling  " zj 

"  The  worst   that  man   can   breathe  " 32 

"  And  make   his   wrongs   his   outsides  " 33 

"And   for   I    know,   your  reverend   ages   love   security" 80 

Twenty  such  verses  occur  in  the  hundred  and  seventeen  Hnes 
of  the  scene.  Thirty  rimes  appear;  and  the  other  metrical 
tokens  of  the  inferior  writer  tally  with  his  average. 

Ill,  vi 
Every  one  admits  that  Shakspere  wrote  the  one  piece  of 
verse  in  the  mock-banquet.    He  alone  was  capable  of  this : 

"  May  you  a  better  feast  never  behold, 
You  knot  of  mouth-friends !      Smoke  and  lukewarm  water 
Is   your   perfection.     This    is   Timon's   last; 
Who,  stuck  and  spangled  with  your  flatteries, 
Washes  it  off,  and  sprinkles  in  your  faces 
Your  reeking  villainy.     Live  loathed,   and  long, 
Most   smiling,    smooth,    detested   parasites. 
Courteous  destroyers,   affable  wolves,  meek  bears. 
You  fools  of  fortune,  trencher-friends,  time's  flies, 
Cap   and   knee   slaves,   vapours,   and   minute-jacks! 
Of  man  and  beast  the  infinite  malady 
Crust  you  quite  o'er!  "  III,  vi,  98. 

The  remainder  of  the  scene,  in  prose,  has  been  subject  to 
all  manner  of  doubt  and  guessing.  It  is  the  second  passage 
on  which  esthetic  evidence  leaves  us  seriously  in  doubt;  for, 
as  prose,  it  gives  us  no  strong  argument  for  either  author. 
There  is  little  or  no  reason,  to  be  sure,  to  think  that  Shakspere 
did  not  write  it;  one  speech  at  least — the  only  long  one,  just 
before  the  verse — seems  very  like  him ;  and  as  we  are  sure  he 
wrote  the  verse,  we  should  think  it  probable  he  wrote  the  prose 
too.  But  we  cannot  claim  that  the  esthetic  evidence  is  strong 
enough  to  prove  the  fact.  The  probability,  however,  will  gain 
strength  in  the  next  chapter. 

IV,  i 
From  the  fourth  act  on,  the  play  may  be  called  Shakspere's. 
In  every  scene,  excepting  one  of  ten  lines  only,  his  hand  is 


46 

manifest;  and  though  three  other  soonos  oinhody  spuriiius  hits 
— making  in  all  less  than  two  Innulrcd  lines — the  latter  are  so 
insignificant,  and,  except  in  i>ne  scene,  so  palpahle,  as  to  give 
us  little  trouble.  In  the  rest  of  the  two  acts,  harring  some 
three  score  lines  of  prose,  the  majesty  of  the  style  leaves  us  in 
no  doubt  of  the  master's  hand.  Appreciations  of  the  separate 
scenes  will  not  be  asked  for  here;  and  analysis  of  technic 
may  be  left  for  tabulation.  It  will  therefore  be  needless  to 
pick  out.  as  we  review  the  scenes  remaining,  passages  equal 
to  what  follows  from  the  present  scene. 

■'  Piety,   and   fear, 
Religion   to  the  gods,   peace,  justice,   truth, 
Domestic  awe,  night-rest,  and  neighbourhood. 
Instruction,  manners,  mysteries,  and  trades, 
Degrees,  observances,   customs,   and  laws, 
Decline  to  your  confounding  contraries, 
And  yet  confusion  live !     Plagues  incident  to  men, 
Your  potent  and  infectious  fevers  heap 
On  Athens,  ripe  for  stroke !     Thou  cold  sciatica, 
Cripple  our  senators,  that  their  limbs  may  halt 
As  lamely  as  their  manners !     Lust  and  liberty 
•    Creep  in  the  minds  and  marrows  of  our  youth. 
That  'gainst  the  stream  of  virtue  they  may  strive, 
And  drown   themselves   in   riot !     Itches,   blains. 
Sow  all  the  Athenian  bosoms,  and  their  crop 
Be  general  leprosy !     Breath  infect  breath, 
That  their  society,  as  their  friendship,  may 
Be  merely  poison!  "  IV,  i,  15. 

IV,  ii 
It  is  all  but  universally  agreed  that  only  Shakspere  could 
have  written  to  line  30  of  this  scene ;  that  he  would  never  have 
been  guilty  of  the  twenty  lines  that  follow.  The  parting  of 
the  servants  is  the  tenderest  scene  in  Timon;  in  it  is  concen- 
trated more  pure  poetry,  perhaps,  than  is  found  in  any  scene 
of  equal  length  in  the  play.  All  the  critics  note  the  breach  be- 
tween it  and  the  twenty-line  soliloquy  the  steward  stays  to 
speak  after  the  servants  go ;  which  is  little  more  than  prose 
run  mad  in  the  inferior  author's  manner.  The  latter's  flaws 
in  technic,  present  in  their  steady  ratio,  \v\\\  be  apparent  from 
an  excerpt. 


47 

"  Poor    honest    lord,    brought    low    by    his    own    heart, 
Undone  by  goodness  !     Strange  unusual  blood, 
When  man's  worst  sin  is,  he  does  too  much  good ! 
My   dearest   lord,   blest   to   be   most   accurst. 
Rich  only  to  be  wretched,  thy  great  fortunes 
Are  made  thy  chief  afflictions.     Alas,  kind  lord ! 
He's  flung  in  rage  from  this  ingrateful  seat 
Of   monstrous   friends  ; 
Nor  has  he  with  him  to  supply  his  life, 
Or  that  which  can  command  it. 
I'll   follow  and  inquire  him  out : 
I'll  ever  serve  his  mind  with  my  best  will ; 
Whilst  I  have  gold,   I'll  be  his   steward  still." 

IV,   ii,    37. 

IV,   iii 

Alcibiades 
Timon's  cave  is  visited  by  Alcibiades,  Apemantus,  certain 
banditti,  the  steward,  the  poet  and  painter,  and  the  senators  of 
Athens.  As  the  play  stands,  no  interval  is  possible  between 
their  visits,  unless  just  before  the  last;  for  Apemantus  follows 
Alcibiades  directly,  and,  before  he  leaves,  sees  the  poet  and 
painter  coming.  Modern  editors,  however,  put  to  it  to  make 
two  acts  of  reasonable  length,  begin  the  fifth  with  the  entrance 
of  the  poet  and  painter,  who  were  seen  approaching  far  back 
in  the  fourth.  For  convenience  we  may  follow  this  division 
here;  examining  the  first  four  visits  separately,  however,  for 
authorship.  Of  that  of  Alcibiades  we  need  only  say  that  it 
has  always  been  admitted  to  be  palpably  Shaksperean. 

Apemantus 
Two  hands  are  admitted  in  this  part.  To  line  291  Shakspere 
assuredly  wrote ;  at  line  292,  quite  as  certainly,  the  other  man 
began.  A  child  would  feel  the  drop  at  that  point  from  the 
stateliness  of  Shakspere's  poetry  to  the  tomfoolery  of  the  other 
author's  prose.  For  tomfoolery  it  is ;  no  sooner  do  the  two 
man-haters,  so  nicely  set  against  each  other  in  Shakspere's 
lines,  pass  from  his  hand,  than  they  leave  their  scathing  ful- 
minations  for  the  cheapest  frippery  of  vaudeville ;  each  trump- 
ing up  questions  on  which  the  other  may  hang  witticisms,  each 


48 

fretting  or  anuising  the  oihvv — fi^r  tlicv  arc  friends  ouv  minute, 
foes  the  next — with  nothings  that  concern  neither  them  nor  us. 
We  ilo  not  care  "  wliere  Timon  Hes  o'  nights."  "  where  Apc- 
niantus  feeds  o'  days,"  what  cither  would  do  with  |)oison  if 
it  "  were  obedient,"  or  for  any  of  the  other  posers  illustrated 
in  the  seconil  of  the  following  ([notations  showing  how  the 
different  authors  handle  Apcmantus.  Shakspere's  brocade  of 
imagery : 

"Thou  hast  cast  away  thyself,  l>cing  like  thyself; 
A   madman   so   long,   now   a    fool.     What !     Think'st 
That   the  bleak  air,  thy  boisterous  chamberlain, 
Will  put  thy  shirt  on  warm  ?     Will  these  moss'd  trees, 
That  have  outlived  the  eagle,  page  thy  heels, 
And  skip  when  thou  point'st  out?     Will   the  cold  brook. 
Candied  with  ice.  caudle  thy  morning  taste 
To   cure  thy  o'er-night's   surfeit?"  IV,   iii,   220. 

The  other  author's  small-talk : 

"  Apcm.  An  thou  hadst  hated  meddlers  sooner,  thou  shouldst  have 
loved  thyself  better  now.  What  man  didst  thou  ever  know  unthrift  that 
was   beloved   after  his   means? 

Tim,  Who,  without  those  means  thou  talkest  of,  didst  thou  ever  know 
beloved  ? 

Apem.     Myself. 

Tim.     I   understand  thee ;   thou  hadst   some  means  to  keep  a  dog. 

Apem.  What  things  in  the  world  canst  thou  nearest  compare  to  thy 
flatterers  ? 

Tim.  Women  nearest ;  but  men,  men  are  the  things  themselves.  What 
wouldst  thou  do  with  the  world,  Apemantus,  if  it  lay  in  thy  power  ? 

Apem.     Give  it  to  the  t)easts,  to  be  rid  of  the  men. 

Tim.  Wouldst  thou  have  thyself  fall  in  the  confusion  of  men,  and 
remain  a  beast  with  the  beasts? 

Apem.     Ay,  Timon."  ^        IV,  iii,  309. 

But  though  the  passage  is  admitted  to  be  spurious,  its  end 
has  never  been  correctly  placed.  Certainly  it  stops  before  line 
376;  there  Shakspere's  hand  is  once  more  unmistakable.  The 
followers  of  Mr.  Fleay,  however,  make  it  close  fifteen  lines 
earlier,    at   line    362;   solely   because   the   verse   begins    again 


49 

there.^®  Even  if  the  inferior  author  did  not  habitually  hash 
his  prose  and  verse,  the  reason  would  seem  insufficient.  But 
there  is  better  reason  to  show  that  he  did  not  leave  off  where 
the  prose  begins. 

At  line  356  Apemantus  starts  to  take  his  leave  of  Timon. 
His  farewells  fill  twenty  Hnes: 

" Apem.  Yonder  comes  a  poet  and  a  painter:  the  plague  of  company 
light  upon  thee !  I  will  fear  to  catch  it,  and  give  way.  When  I  know 
not  what  else  to  do,  I'll  see  thee  again. 

Tim.  When  there  is  nothing  living  but  thee,  thou  shalt  be  welcome. 
I  had  rather  be  a  beggar's  dog  than   Apemantus. 

Apem.     Thou  art  the  cap  of  all  the  fools  alive. 

Tim.     Would  thou  wert  clean  enough  to  spit  upon ! 

Apem.     A  plague  on  thee,  thou  art  too  bad  to  curse. 

Tim.     All  villains  that  do  stand  by  thee  are  pure. 

Apem.     There   is  no  leprosy  but  what  thou  speak'st. 

Tim.     If  I  name  thee. 
I'll  beat  thee,  but  I  should  infect  my  hands. 

Apem.     I  would  my  tongue  could  rot  them  off ! 

Tim.    Away,  thou  issue  of  a  mangy  dog ! 
Choler  does  kill  me  that  thou  art  alive ; 
I  swoon  to  see  thee. 

Apem.     Would  thou  wouldst  burst ! 

Tim.  Away,  thou  tedious  rogue ! 

I   am  sorry   I   shall  lose  a  stone  by  thee. 

Apem.     Beast ! 

Tim.     Slave ! 

Apem.     Toad ! 

Tim.     Rogue,  rogue,  rogue  !  " 

And  after  this  last  breathless  anathema,  after  the  stone  is 
hurled  at  him,  does  Apemantus  not  decamp?  Not  at  all! 
Certain  he  is  gone,  we  read  on  into  the  soliloquy  that  Timon 
now  begins;  and  at  the  end  we  start  at  finding  that  the  cynic 
has  stayed  through  it  all.  Only  one  inference  is  then  possible. 
Shakspere  wrote  the  soliloquy;  the  other  author  must  have 
written  the  leave-taking  that  precedes  it ;  for  we  may  be  sure 

'°  Mr.    Fleay   also    thought    that    Apemantus'    line    (363) — "Thou    art    the 
cap    of    all    the    fools    alive" — made    a    good    answer    to    line    291,    where 
Shakspere  left  off.     It  is  no  more  apposite  to  that  line  than  to  any  speech 
of  Timon's  whatsoever. 
5 


r)() 

that  Shakspero  lu-vor  wnuc  such  a  valciliclion  only  to  koop 
a  character  on  the  stage. 

The  spurious  work,  then,  runs  from  line  2i)i  to  line  376. 
Ant!  now  note  how  the  latter  line,  if  we  cut  all  that  intervenes, 
links  with  perfect  seipience  to  the  former.  Tiinon  lias  just 
-ii-'wod  Apeniantus  his  gold: 

"  .tpcm.     Here   is  no  use   for  gold, 

Tim.  The  Ixjst  and  truest ; 

For  here  it  sleeps,  and  docs  no  hired  harm.     (Line  29') 
I  am  sick  of  this  false  world,  and  will  love  nought  (Line  376) 
But  even  the  mere  necessities  upon't." 

He  despises  treasure  and  wmII  love  only  roots ;  and  one  finds  it 
hard  to  think  that  the  sentences  were  not  consecutive  as  Shak- 
spere  wrote  them.  But  even  if  Shakspere's  parts  did  not  fit 
so  nicely,  we  might  be  sure  that  the  limits  of  the  spurious  work 
are  fixed. 

The  Banditti 
Admitting  that  the  body  of  this  part  is  self-evidently  Shaks- 
pere's, many  critics  yet  ascribe  the  opening  and  closing  bits  of 
dialogue  between  the  bandits  to  the  other  author.  Herein 
they  follow  Mr.  Fleay;  and  Mr.  Fleay's  sole  reason  for 
thinking  that  the  bandits'  dialogue  is  spurious  was  that  it  is 
prose. ^'  When  we  find  that  Mr.  Fleay  has  given  the  inferior 
writer  every  word  of  prose,  without  exception,  in  the  play, 
we  begin  to  doubt  his  judgment  where  it  has  no  further  basis; 
and  when  we  see,  moreover,  that  Shakspere  meant  the  bandits 
to  hold  some  dialogue  before  addressing  Timon — for  he  makes 
Timon  prepare,  as  they  approach,  to  "  eat  and  abhor  them  " — 
we  are  inclined  to  think  he  must  have  written  that  dialogue. 
We  do  not  care  very  much  who  wrote  it ;  but  everything  points, 
at  least,  to  Shakspere. 

"  For  his  other  reason — that  the  bandits  had  no  chance  to  learn  from 
any  one  that  Timon  had  the  gold  they  came  to  steal — would,  if  valid,  argue 
their  whole  scene  spurious,  not  the  prose  of  it  alone.  But  the  argument 
is  negligible.  It  would  be  no  great  breach  of  dramatic  license  if  Shak- 
spere left  their  source  of  information  obscure — by  no  means  the  greatest 
breach  of  this  kind  that  Shakspere  has  left  us ;  Alcibiades  had  a  whole 
army,  however,  to  tell  them.  It  would  be  just  as  reasonable  to  argue 
that  Apemantus  and  the  others  had  no  way  of  knowing  where  Timon  was. 


51 

The  Stczvard 

It  was  to  make  way  for  the  steward's  visit  that  the  inferior 
author  tagged  the  scene  of  the  servants'  parting  with  a  solilo- 
quy in  which  the  steward  resolves  to  follow  his  master. 
While  it  does  not  thence  ensue  that  this  author  wrote  all  or  any 
of  the  steward's  visit,  traces  of  his  hand  in  it  will  at  least  not 
be  surprising.  But  Shakspere  also  planned  the  visit  of  the 
faithful  steward.  Two  hundred  lines  below,  Shakspere  em- 
ploys him  to  guide  the  senators  to  Timon's  cave ;  and  the 
first  words  at  that  point  unmistakably  imply  the  steward's 
previous  visit.  Since  Shakspere,  then,  assumes  the  present 
scene,  we  might  expect  to  find  it  all  or  partly  his. 

Partly  his,  partly  the  other  writer's,  we  do  find  it.  Between 
the  thin  lines  of  the  opening  soliloquy,  for  instance,  the  signa- 
ture of  the  inferior  author  is  manifest  in  his  unfailing  irreg- 
ularities and  rimes.  Witness  the  gaucherie  of  the  third  and 
fifth  verses,  the  rimes  that  follow,  and  the  nonsense  of  the  last 
couplet : 

"  O  you  gods  ! 
Is  yond  despis'd  and  ruinous  man  my  lord? 
Full   of   decay  and   failing?     O   monument 
And  wonder  of  good  deeds   evilly  bestow'd ! 
What  an  alteration  of  honour  has  desperate  want  made ! 
What  viler  thing  upon  the  earth  than  friends 
Who  can  bring  noblest  minds  to  basest  ends ! 
How  rarely  does  it  meet  with  this  time's  guise, 
That  man  was  wished  to  love  his  enemies ! 
Grant  I  may  ever  love,  and  rather  woo 
Those  that  would  mischief  me  than  those  that  do !  " 

Will  any  reader  feel  that  this  is  Shakspere's?  But  as  soon  as 
the  steward  gets  through  his  soliloquy  and  speaks  to  Timon, 
the  style  leaps  into  poetry,  and  the  metrical  tokens  of  the  in- 
ferior writer — save  for  a  single  rime — vanish.  The  poetry, 
surely  Shakspere's,  lasts  to  line  508.  There,  after  a  broken 
verse,  starts  a  prosaic  digression,  occupied  with  Timon's 
contradictory  suspicions  of  the  steward  he  has  just  pronounced 
"  so  true,  so  just,  so  comfortable,"  and  showing  enough  of  the 
inferior  author's  tricks  of  meter  to  make  his  hand  highly  prob- 


able.  This  digression  over  at  line  530.  the  thouf^ht  of  line 
508  is  taken  up  again  in  a  style  sucii  as  that  author  never 
wrote: 

"  Thou  singly  honest  man, 
Here,    take:    the    gods   out   of    my    misery 
Have  sent   thee  treasure.     Go,   live   rich  and  happy  ; 
But  thus  conditioned :  thou  shalt  build  from  men  ; 
Hate  all,  curse  all ;  show  charity  to  none. 
And  let  the   famished  flesh  slide  from  the  bone. 
Ere  thou  relieve  the  beggar ;  give  to  dogs 
What  thou  deniest  to  men  ;  let  prisons  swallow  'em. 
Debts  wither  'em  to  nothing ;  be  men  like  blasted  woods, 
And  may  diseases  lick  up  their  false  bloods ! 
And  so   farewell  and  thrive." 

Evidence  within  and  without  the  scene,  then,  points  to  two 
authors  in  the  steward's  visit.  It  need  not  be  argued  that 
the  exact  division  here  made  is  beyond  dispute.  We  may  in- 
deed be  fairly  certain  that  the  first  soliloquy  is  spurious  ;  that  the 
passage  thence  to  line  508,  and  the  passage  after  line  530,  are 
genuine.  But  the  digression  between  these  lines,  though  far 
more  likely  the  inferior  author's,  might  conceivably  be  Shaks- 
pere's.  The  evidence  does  not  sanction  the  clean-cut  demark- 
ation  we  have  made  in  some  of  the  preceding  scenes ;  and  it  is 
inadvisable  to  stretch  the  facts.  One  thing  somewhat  signi- 
ficant, however,  should  be  noted — that  the  two  parts  most 
surely  Shakspere's  make  the  scene ;  the  soliloquy  and  the 
digression  may  be  omitted  with  advantage. 

V,  i 
It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  Shakspere  wrote  all  that 
follows  line  57  in  the  visit  of  the  poet  and  the  painter,  and 
the  entire  visit  of  the  senators.  So  much  may  be  taken  as  self- 
evident.  And  just  because  he  wrote  the  body  of  the  scene 
we  have  some  reason  not  to  follow  Mr.  Fleay,  as  most  critics 
do,  in  giving  the  opening  dialogue  of  the  poet  and  the  painter, 
before  line  57,  to  the  other  author.  It  is  mainly  prose ;  and  in 
it  Phrynia  and  Timandra  are  spelled  Phrinica  and  Timandylo. 
But  the  prose  is  Shaksperean  enough ;  and  the  misspelling  is 
more  like  a  corruption,  or  a  printer's  error,  than  an  author's. 


53 

Final  proof  is  lacking,  and  is  not  of  great  importance;  but  it 
is  at  least  more  probable  that  Sliakspere  wrote  the  introduction 
to  his  own  scene — an  introduction  that  certainly  contains  one 
string  of  conceits  neater  than  his  coadjutor  usually  gives  us: 

"  Promising  is  the  very  air  o'  the  time ;  it  opens  the  eyes  of  expecta- 
tion ;  performance  is  ever  the  duller  for  his  act ;  and,  but  in  the  plainer 
and  simpler  kind  of  people,  the  deed  of  saying  is  quite  out  of  use.  To 
promise  is  most  courtly  and  fashionable ;  performance  is  a  kind  of  will  or 
testament,  which  argues  a  great  sickness  in  his  judgment  that  makes 
it."  V,    i,    24. 

Aside  from  the  question  of  authorship,  the  belated  entrance 
of  the  poet  and  painter  calls  for  a  word.  In  the  spurious  pas- 
sage in  his  visit  Apemantus  sees  them  coming  and  "  gives 
way  "  to  escape  them.  We  therefore  expect  them  when  he 
leaves ;  but  then  the  bandits  enter,  and  the  steward  follows  next. 
Only  after  these  have  taken  up  two  hundred  lines — in  modern 
editions,  after  a  new  act  has  started — do  the  poet  and  the 
painter  finally  arrive.  This  matter,  though  much  agitated, 
need  not  detain  us  long  here.^^  Let  us  only  remember  that  it 
is  a  spurious  passage  in  which  the  poet  and  painter  are  an- 
nounced approaching;  and  if  we  later  prove  that  that  passage 
was  added  after  Shakspere  wrote  the  play,  we  shall  see  that 
in  his  play  the  poet  and  painter  were  not  announced  at  all, 
and  were  therefore  not  belated.  Our  fifth  act  can  then  open 
where  it  does  without  confusion. 

"  Having  no  bearing  on  the  authorship.  To  show  this  fact,  let  us 
assume — for  once,  to  save  space,  anticipating — that  the  man  who  wrote 
the  announcement  of  the  poet  and  painter  interpolated  Shakspere's  play. 
Two  inferences  might  then  be  drawn.  First,  that  as  he  announced  the 
poet  and  painter,  he  wrote  the  scene  in  which  they  come;  but  if  so,  he 
would  have  placed  it  next.  Second,  that  he  wrote  the  scenes  that  inter- 
vene between  announcement  and  arrival — 'the  bandits'  visit  and  the 
steward's ;  but  if  so,  he  would  have  brought  them  in  after  the  poet  and 
painter.  All  this  regardless  of  the  fact  that  all  three  scenes  show  the 
clearest  evidence  of  Shakspere.  Finally,  the  scenes  have  not  been 
shuffled;  for  the  painter  mentions  that  the  "soldiers"  (bandits)  and  the 
steward  have  preceded  him  at  Timon's  cave. 


r)4 

\'  ;  ii.  iii.  iv 

As  the  usual  view  of  ihcin  is  incontestable,  we  may  take 
the  last  three  scenes  tojjether.  The  first  scene  before  Athens 
has  not  been  doubted  to  be  Shakspere's.  The  ten-line  scene 
at  Tinion's  grave  which  follows  it  is  quite  as  certainly  the 
other  author's.  The  style  of  the  ten  lines,  particularly  of  the 
last  four,  is  Hat.  We  had  not  heard  before  that  Alcibiades  was 
a  linguist;  and  we  are  rather  impatient  with  a  soldier  who  can- 
not read  in  line  (>  though  he  could  read  in  line  4 — and  did  there 
read  the  superlluous  epitaph  that  Timon  must  be  thought  to 
have  hung  upon  some  tree  before  ho  put  the  real  one  on  his 
tombstone.'"  To  such  shifts  is  the  inferior  author  put  to  save 
the  genuine  epitaph  for  Alcibiades  to  read — as  Shaksperc 
makes  him — in  the  closing  scene  of  the  play.  For  the  final 
scene,  again,  can  only  be  considered  Shakspere's  work.-" 

In  many  passages  our  evidence  has  led  us  to  ascriptions  that 
seem  practically  final ;  in  others  to  grave  probabilities ;  in  only 
two  to  serious  doubt.  The  first  half  of  the  opening  scene 
we  gave  to  Shakspere;  but  we  were  doubtful  of  the  prose  part 
of  the  last  half,  where  Apemantus  figures.  The  banquet  scene 
we  gave  in  toto  to  the  other  author.  The  little  scene  that 
leads  up  to  the  dunning  w^e  found  Shakspere's.  The  next 
scene  we  divided  into  three  parts.     We  gave  the  dunning  it- 

"  Dr.  Brinsley  Nicholson's  explanation  of  the  soldier's  actions  seems 
correct.  The  soldier  enters,  looking  for  Timon,  and  calls:  "Who's  there? 
Speak,  ho !  "  Then  after  a  moment  he  says,  "  No  answer !  What  is 
this  ?  "     "  This  "  proves  to  be  some  sign  or  other,  which  reads : 

"  Timon    is    dead,    who    hath    outstretched    his    span. 
Some  beast  read  this ;    there  does   not   live   a   man." 

When  the  soldier  has  read  this  couplet,  he  sees  the  tomb ;  so  he  says : 
■■  Dead,  sure ;  and  this  his  grave.  What's  on  this  tomb  I  cannot  read."  It 
has  been  suggested  that  the  soldier  spoke  the  couplet,  and  that  the  word 
"  read "  in  it  should  be  "  rear'd."  But  the  natural  explanation  seems 
to  be  the  one  Nicholson  gives  (New  Shakspere  Society  Transactions,  1874, 
page  251). 

"There  two  epitaphs — both  from  Plutarch — are  read  as  one.  It  is  just 
possible  that  Shakspere  did  not  notice  the  contradiction  between  them — 
one  of  them  saying,  "  Seek  not  my  name,"  the  other,  "  Here  lie  I,  Timon." 
Or  it  is  possible,  as  has  been  guessed,  that  he  copied  both,  intending 
later  to  scratch  one. 


55 

self  to  Shakspere;  the  slap-stick  feats  of  Apemantus  then 
ensuing  to  the  other  author;  and  the  reckoning  of  Timon  with 
the  steward — barring  the  ten  Hues  of  prose  which  break  it  in 
the  middle,  and  which  we  left  for  consideration  later — to 
Shakspere  again.  In  the  third  act  we  ascribed  the  first  two 
begging  scenes,  of  Lucullus  and  Lucius,  to  Shakspere ;  but  the 
third,  that  of  Sempronius,  to  the  other  man.  To  the  latter 
we  also  attributed  the  second  dunning  and  the  scene  of  Alci- 
hiades'  banishment.  The  one  verse  speech  of  the  mock-ban- 
quet we  found  Shakspere's  palpably;  the  prose  of  it  we  left 
in  doubt.  Almost  all  the  last  two  acts  we  adjudged  Shak- 
spere's. The  only  portions  not  ascribed  to  him  were  the  solil- 
oquy appended  to  the  parting  of  the  servants ;  the  break-down 
in  the  middle  of  Apemantus'  visit  to  Timon ;  the  soliloquy 
beginning,  and  probably  the  digression  breaking,  the  visit  of 
the  steward;  and  the  ten  lines  of  the  soldier  at  the  tomb. 
The  evidence  we  found  for  these  ascriptions  is  so  strong  that 
most  critics  have  accepted  the  larger  part  of  it  as  conclusive. 
Yet  it  has  not  satisfied  us  everywhere.  More  evidence  will  be 
welcome  if  available ;  and  we  shall  find  in  the  next  chapter  that 
more  is  at  hand. 

It  will  be  convenient  to  have  our  ascriptions  together  in  a 
table  that  will  show  wherein  they  differ  from  those  some- 
what generally  agreed  upon.  Mr.  Fleay's  are  taken  as  the 
norm  of  the  latter,  and  italics  mark  the  departures  we  have 
made.  These  are  not  many ;  some  five  hundred  lines  in  all  are 
transferred  to  Shakspere,  and  fifteen  to  the  other  author;  but 
some  of  the  changes  will  later  prove  of  the  first  importance. 
They  will  be  clearer  if  Shakspere's  work  alone  is  given. 

Mr.  Fleay's  Ascriptions  The  Present  Ascriptions 

I,  i,    1-184;   249-264;  284-293  I,  i   {entire') 

II,  i  II,  i 

II,  ii,    1-45;    132-194;   205-242  II,    ii,    1-46;    133-242    (except    one 

line) 
HI,  i 
III,  ii 

III,  vi,   95-115  III,  vi    {entire) 

IV,  i  IV,  i 

IV,  ii,  1-29  IV,   ii,   1-29 


60 

IV,  Jii.    I-J9I  ;   363-398;    4«4-45J  1\'.    •>•-    >-29i  ;    376-463;    479-508; 

530-543 

V.  i.   57-J3«  ^^   '    (<•»•'•>«) 
V.  ii  V.   ii 

V,  iv  V,  iv 

A  Metrical  Tabic 

The  two  verse-tests  that  help  us  most  in  Tiinoii — rimes 
ami  irregular  lines — have  been  already  used,  wIktc  needed, 
almost  to  the  full.  It  remains  only  to  tabulate  them,  witli  the 
minor  tests,  for  the  whole  play.  One  meets  some  difficulties 
in  making  out  the  table.  It  is  always  hard  to  maintain  an  exact 
criterion  for  run-on  lines,  or  even  for  irregularities ;  and  a 
special  difficulty  occurs  in  some  of  the  inferior  author's  scenes 
— the  impossibility  of  telling  v^hether  certain  passages  are  meant 
for  prose  or  verse.  So  far  as  possible,  however,  one  criterion 
has  been  kept  up;  and  in  every  case  of  doubt  that  figure  is 
here  given  which  will  cause  the  least  divergence.  In  in- 
terpreting the  table,  also,  some  allowance  must  of  course  be 
made  for  a  natural  disparity  in  certain  points  of  technic  be- 
tween scenes  of  either  author  written  in  long  speeches,  and 
other  scenes  by  the  same  author  but  made  up  of  broken  dia- 
logue. For  this  reason  it  is  natural  that  the  per  cent,  of  Shak- 
spere's  feminine  endings  and  of  his  run-on  lines  should  once  or 
twice  approach  the  per  cent,  of  the  other  author,  and  vice 
versa.  With  this  reservation  in  the  case  of  a  few  scenes,  the 
following  table  shows  us  practically  constant  divergences  for 
all  phenomena.     They  may  be  summarized  about  as  follows: 

The  least  divergence  occurs  in  the  frequency  of  feminine 
endings,  in  which  Shakspere's  ratio  to  the  other  author  is  as 
22  to  14.  A  greater  difference  is  seen  in  run-on  lines,  of 
which  Shakspere  uses  27  to  the  other  author's  12.  But  the 
marked  distinctions  appear  in  the  use  of  rimes  and  of  irregular 
lines,  for  which  the  ratios  are  as  4  to  21,  and  4  to  18,  re- 
spectively. 


57 


Shakspere's  Verse 


Feminine 

Run-on 

Rime<!. 

Irregular 

Passage. 

Verses. 

Endings. 

Lines. 

Lines. 

No. 

!« 

No. 

i 

No. 

i 

No. 

^ 

I,  i,  I-184;  249-264; 

210 

51 

.24 

57 

.27 

2 

.01 — 

4 

.02 — 

284-293. 

II,  i. 

35 

7 

.20 

12 

•34 

2 

.06— 

3 

.09- 

II,  ii,  1-46. 

46 

II 

.24 

10 

.22 

2 

.04+ 

3 

.07— 

II.  ii,  133-242. 

109 

31 

.28 

30 

.28 

4 

.04— 

7 

.07— 

Ill,  i,  50-66. 

16 

4 

.25 

4 

.25 

2 

.12* 

2 

.12 

Ill,  ii,  42-46  ;  68-94. 

32 

7 

.22 

6 

.19 

4 

.12* 

4 

.12 

Ill,  vi,  98-115. 

18 

2 

.11 

4 

.22 

4 

.22* 

I 

.06— 

IV,  i. 

40 

5 

.12 

10 

.25 

6 

.15* 

I 

.02-f- 

IV,  ii,  1-29. 

29 

8 

.28 

4 

.14 

2 

.07— 

I 

.03+ 

IV,   iii,    1-291  ;  376- 

390 

76 

.20 

104 

.27 

10 

•03— 

15 

.04— 

398; 418-452; 478- 

508;  530-543- 

V,  i,  44-231. 

188 

48 

.26 

44 

•23 

10 

.05  f 

4 

.02 -|- 

V,  ii. 

17 

5 

.29 

6 

.35 

2 

.12* 

0 

.00 

V,  iv. 

«5 

10 

.12 

35 

.41 

4 

.05- 

I 

.01+ 

Totals. 

1215 

265 

.22 

326 

.27 

54 

.04+ 

46 

.04— 

The  Spurious  Verse 


Passage. 

Verses. 

Feminine 
Endings. 

Run-or 

Lines. 

Rimes. 

Irregular  Lines. 

No. 

"^ 

No. 

i 

No. 
32 

.21 

No. 

^ 

I,  ii. 

1.56 

24 

•15 

19 

.12 

24 

•15 

Ill,  iii. 

34 

7 

.21 

5 

•15 

6 

.18 

9 

.26 

Ill,  iv. 

72 

7 

.10 

7 

.  10 

8 

.11 

12 

•17 

Ill,    V. 

117 

20 

•17 

18 

•15 

30 

.25 

20 

•17 

IV,  ii,  30-50. 

22 

2 

.09 

2 

.09 

« 

.36 

6 

.27 

IV,  iii,  362-375. 

13 

0 

.CO 

I 

.08 

0 

.oof 

2 

•15 

V,  iii. 

10 

0 

.00 

I 

.10 

4 

■40 

I 

.10 

Totals. 

424 

60 

.14 

53 

.12 

88 

.21 

74 

.18 

*  The  anomalies — the  only  striking  ones  in  the  table — are  merely  ap- 
parent. In  each  case  they  are  caused  by  one  or  two  final  couplets,  which  in 
scenes  of  very  few  verses,  of  course  give  a  high  per  cent.  Leave  out  all 
final  couplets,  and  the  column  will  range,  as  was  said,  between  .00  and 
.02  per  cent. 

t  The  only  verses  in  which  the  inferior  author  did  not  rime  are  in  this 
piece  of   repartee,   in   which   rime   would  be   out  of  the  question. 


ciiArTi'.k  IV 

SlIAKSriCKli's    rklORITY 

"  To  be  thus  is  nothing;  but  to  be  safely  thus."  So  far  we 
have  been  bent  on  taking  our  play  ajiart.  distributing  its  scenes 
anil  passages  between  the  authors;  our  work  is  only  half  done 
until  we  tind  out  why  and  in  what  way  those  scenes  and  pas- 
sages were  put  together  in  the  incongruous  whole.  When  we 
have  found  reason  to  give  Shakspere  nearly  everything  that  is 
worthy  in  the  play,  and  the  otlier  author  much  that  is  wretched, 
we  are  called  on  to  account  for  the  presence  of  both  authors 
and  both  kinds  of  work.  We  ask  immediately  whether  Shak- 
spere's  work  in  Ti)non  was  done  first  or  last;  was  he  or  the 
other  author  the  reviser?  And  evidently  much  depends  upon 
the  answer — nothing  less  than  Shakspere's  responsibility  for 
the  play  as  it  stands. 

Additional  proof  of  the  ascriptions  we  have  made  is  yet  to 
come,  and  will  accompany  the  answer  to  the  question  just 
propounded.  But  if  we  may  take  our  ascriptions,  for  a 
moment,  as  even  roughly  accurate,  a  glance  will  show  how 
clearly  the  scenes  and  passages  most  surely  spurious  seem  to 
be  additions  to  the  play  as  Shakspere  had  written  it.  Shak- 
spere ended  his  first  scene  with  all  the  persons  going  in  to 
dinner;  the  other  author  seems  to  carry  out  the  hint  in  his 
wretched  banquet  scene.  Shakspere  closed  the  dunning  scene 
by  sending  the  creditors  ofif  the  stage ;  the  man  who  made  them 
turn  and  stay  to  joke  with  Apemantus  seems  certainly  to  have 
written  later.  Shakspere  wrote  two  scenes  where  Timon's 
friends  deny  him ;  the  other  man  put  in  a  third.  Then  he  ap- 
parently repeated  Shakspere's  dunning  scene ;  and  after  this 
wrote  in  the  scene  of  Alcibiades'  banishment,  the  utter  insula- 
tion of  which  argues  it  inserted  in  a  play  already  written.  He 
tagged  to  Shakspere's  scene  of  the  parting  of  the  servants  the 
steward's  maudlin  soliloquy ;  for  we  can  hardly  think  the  scene 

58 


59 

was  added  to  the  soliloquy.  But  the  clearest  of  all  his  inser- 
tions is  the  drollery  of  Apemantus  in  the  middle  of  his  visit 
to  Timon;  for  the  two  lines  between  which  it  comes  were 
apparently  consecutive  in  Shakspere.  We  need  push  these 
probabilities  no  further.  It  is  enough  at  present  to  see  that 
all  the  spurious  passages  seem  naturally  explainable  as  addi- 
tions to  Shakspere ;  that  hardly  one  can  be  plausibly  explained 
as  antedating  him.  To  make  safer  the  ascriptions  on  which 
the  theory  of  his  priority  rests,  and  to  put  that  theory,  if 
possible,  beyond  dispute,  certain  further  arguments  will  now 
be  offered. 

I 

The  first  of  these,  touching  the  treatment  of  Ventidius  by 
the  two  authors,  is  Mr.  Fleay's.  It  is  easy  to  see  what  Shak- 
spere meant  to  do  with  Ventidius.  In  the  first  scene  he  makes 
Timon,  in  affluence,  ransom  Ventidius  from  a  debtor's  prison 
with  five  talents.  At  the  close  of  the  second  act,  when  the  now 
insolvent  Timon  is  appealing  to  his  friends  for  help,  he  lets 
him  send  to  Ventidius  as  a  last  and  surest  friend,  now  rich, 
for  those  five  talents.  We  cannot  think  that  Shakspere  meant 
to  stop  here.  In  a  later  scene,  surely — after  the  other  friends 
of  Timon  have  deserted — he  meant  to  show  Ventidius  denying 
the  request.  Such  a  refusal  would  have  put  the  climax  on  the 
ingratitude  of  Timon's  friends;  and  without  it  the  part  of 
Ventidius  in  the  play  is  pointless.  But  before  we  reach  the 
request  to  Ventidius  we  have  seen  it  practically  nullified.  For 
the  author  of  the  banquet  scene  could  think  of  no  better  way 
to  open  it  than  by  making  Ventidius^  offer  to  repay  Timon's 
loan.  With  this  error  behind  him,  the  author  found  it  difflcult 
to  show  Ventidius  refusing  Timon's  appeal ;  so  instead  he 
merely  mentions  the  refusal  casually  in  the  scene  where  he 
displays  that  of  his  own  Sempronius. 

We  may  be  sure,  with  Mr.  Fleay,  that  Shakspere  did  not 
frustrate  his  own  plan ;  that  the  passage  in  the  banquet  scene 
which  cripples  the  device  of  the  appeal  to  Ventidius  for  aid, 
and   the   consequent   bare   mention    of   the    lattcr's    defection 

^  Who  finds  time  to  take  over  the  estate  of  a  father  who  finds  time  to 
die,  between  the  first  and  second  scenes,  where  there  is  no  interval. 


60 

where  Shakspcrc  apparcmly  im'anl  lo  make  it  a  climactic  scene, 
arc  the  work  of  another  author.  If  so,  tliat  aiillior  widtc  last. 
For  Shakspcre  has  the  plot  of  the  X'entidius  matter;  the  other 
man  subverts  it.  Shakspere's  parts  of  it  had  a  source;-  the 
others  none.  Less  significantly.  Shakspere  spells  the  name 
J'cntidius  or  J'ctitiddius;  the  other  man  corrupts  it  to  J'oi- 
tiifius  or  J'cntidijius.'^  It  must  needs  he  that  the  author  who 
followed  the  source,  constructed  the  plot,  and  spelled  the  name 
correctly,  preceded  the  author  who  deviated  from  the  source, 
undermined  the  plot,  and  corrupted  the  spelling  of  the  name. 
And  if  we  could  still  assume  the  contrary — that  the  spurious 
passages  about  \^entidius  are  relics  from  an  older  play — we 
should  have  to  think  not  only  that  Shakspere  was  strangely 
satisfied  to  rewrite  two  of  them  and  leave  two  others  imbecile, 
not  only  that  he  sanctioned  the  abortion  of  the  Ventidius  plot, 
but  that  this  abortion  occurred  in  two  plays,  and  that  Shak- 
spere, revising  the  first,  did  not  see  it  and  correct  it  in  the 
second. 

So  far  Mr.  FIcay ;  who  misses  only  the  last  link  in  the  argu- 
ment. For  he  does  not  seem  to  have  suspected  that  Shakspere 
may  have  actually  written  the  refusal  of  Ventidius  as  planned. 
That  Shakspere  probably  did  write  the  scene  out,  and  that  the 
other  author  cut  it  and  replaced  it  with  his  own  Sempronius 
scene,  will  be  corollaries  to  the  farther-reaching  argument  that 
now  begins. 

II 

In  the  last  scene  of  the  second  act,  where  Timon  finally 
gives  ear  to  the  steward's  revelations  and  resolves  to  send  out 
servants  to  his  friends  for  help,  Shakspere's  poetry  is  at  its 
height.  Just  about  the  center  of  the  scene,  however,  there 
occurs  an  ugly  break,  for  ten  lines  only,  into  prose.  The  mere 
lapse  into  prose,  striking  enough  at  such  a  point,  is  not  the 
oddest  thing  about  the  passage.  Others  will  be  noted  if  the 
prose  be  taken  with  its  context. 

"  Timon.    And,  in  some  sort,  these  wants  of  mine  are  crown'd, 
That  I   account  them  blessings  ;   for  by  these 

'  Page  19. 

'  Compare  I,  i  and  II,  ii  with  I,  ii  and  III,  iii. 


61 

Shall  I  try  friends.     You  shall  perceive  how  you 
Mistake  my  fortunes  ;  I   am  wealthy  in  my   friends. 
Within  there  !      Flavius  !      Servilius  ! 

Enter  three  Servants. 

Ser.     My  lord?     my  lord? 

Tim.  I  will  dispatch  you  severally :  you  to  Lord  Lucius ;  to  Lord 
Lucullus  you,  I  hunted  with  his  honour  to-day  ;  you  to  Sempronius  ;  com- 
mend me  to  their  loves,  and  I  am  proud,  say,  that  my  occasions  have  found 
time  to  use  'em  toward  a  supply  of  money.     Let  the  request  be  fifty  talents. 

Flam.     As  you  have  said,  my  lord. 

Steward.     Lord  Lucius  and  Lucullus!     Humh !  "  II,  ii,   190. 

This  will  be  enough.  The  scene  returns  to  verse  now — and 
to  such  poetry  as  leaves  no  question  of  the  author.  Yet  we 
must  remember  what  takes  place  in  the  remainder  of  the  scene. 
Let  us  therefore  note  that  Timon  now  turns  to  the  steward  who 
is  sneering  at  the  names  of  Lucius  and  Lucullus  and  bids  him 
go  and  demand  a  thousand  talents  from  the  senate.  The 
steward  answers  that  the  senate  has  refused  already.  Timon 
can  then  send  him  only  to  Ventidius  for  the  five  talents  which 
the  latter  owes. 

Just  before  the  prose  begins,  as  will  be  noted,  Timon  calls 
two  servants — Flavius  and  Servilius.  Three  answer;  and  of 
these  one  is  Flaminius,*  one  Servilius,^  the  third  nameless. 
Clearly  it  took  two  hands  to  make  these  blunders.  One  writer 
would  not,  in  a  breath,  have  changed  the  number  of  the  ser- 
vants and  the  name  of  one  of  them. 

If  the  blunders  in  the  bit  of  prose  were  all,  the  passage 
might  be  negligible.  We  could  call  it  spurious,  if  so  doing 
would  explain  it,  and  be  through.  But  the  fact  is  that  this  bit 
of  prose,  intrinsically  trivial,  will  be  found  to  form  a  kind  of 
keystone  in  the  entire  structure  of  the  first  three  acts.  Many 
threads  of  plot  begin  or  end  or  center  in  it;  and  genuine  or 
spurious,  almost  all  the  scenes  in  the  three  acts  connect,  and 

■*  That  Flam,  (line  203)  stands  for  Plaminius  is  apparent  from  the  next 
scene.  We  cannot  suppose  Flavius,  in  line  194,  to  be  a  misprint  for 
Flaminius  without  ruining  the  meter  of  the  line  ;  and  the  name  Flavius  has 
already  occurred  in  the  play  (I,  ii) — of  which  occurrence  later. 

"  As  may  be  told  from  the  second  scene  following. 


62 

many  of  thoni  strangely  ami  suspiciously  connect,  with  the  hit 
of  prose  or  with  its  context.  We  have  just  been  speaking,  for 
instance,  of  the  part  X'entidius  has  in  the  i)lay.  His  part 
begins  in  the  first  scene,  where  Shaksperc  makes  him  borrow 
of  Timon ;  is  perverted  in  the  banciuet  scene,  where  the  other 
writer  makes  him  olYer  to  repay;  and  therefore  has  to  be  cut 
short  in  the  present  scene,  where  Shakspere  makes  Timon  him- 
self ask  for  repayment.  For  the  other  author  thought  Venti- 
dius  could  not  now  be  shown  refusing;  so  he  merely  let 
Sempronius  mention  the  refusal.  Or  take  another  thread 
connecting  with  the  banquet  scene.  Throughout  tiiat  scene, 
but  nowhere  else,  the  steward's  name  is  Flavins.  Now  in  the 
line  preceding  our  prose  extract,  Timon,  talking  with  the 
steward,  calls  forth  another  servant  named  Flavins.  But  in 
the  prose  itself  this  name  turns  to  Flaminius ;  and  so  remains 
thereafter.  The  facts  may  be  suspected  to  have  a  connection. 
Such  are  the  bearings  of  the  bit  of  prose  on  what  precedes 
it.  With  what  follows  it  connects  more  closely ;  for  three 
threads  of  plot  begin  in  its  ten  lines.  In  the  prose  bit  Timon 
sends  to  Lucius,  Lucullus,  and  Sempronius,  for  fifty  talents 
each.  Three  scenes  follow  in  which  Timon's  servants  inter- 
view Lucullus,  Lucius,  and  Sempronius,  respectively.  Now 
it  is  manifest  that  any  theory  as  to  the  author  of  the  bit  of 
prose  must  make  peace  with  a  theory  as  to  the  author  of  the 
three  scenes.  For  instance,  if  the  prose  is  held  to  be  inter- 
polated, so  the  scenes  must  be;  they  could  not  have  already 
existed  in  the  play  without  the  prose  to  prepare  for  and  explain 
them.  And  yet — to  complicate  the  matter — so  easy  a  solution 
cannot  be  right  unless  a  point  in  our  reasoning  so  far  is  wrong; 
for  we  have  already  given  judgment  for  two  authors  in  the 
three  scenes — Shakspere  in  the  first  two  and  the  other  writer 
in  the  third.  To  let  this  division  hold  is  therefore  part  of  our 
problem  with  the  bit  of  prose.  Curious,  again,  seem  the  con- 
nections of  the  piece  of  prose  with  the  second  dunning  scene. 
Flaminius,  who  only  came  into  this  name  in  the  prose  bit,  again 
appears  in  that  scene.  Sempronius  also — who  is  never  else- 
where mentioned  except  in  the  prose  bit  and  in  his  own  scene 
— is  referred  to  there."     A  Lucius,  too,  comes   forth  there; 

'Line  112, 


63 

what  Lucius  it  is  hard  to  say.  In  the  bit  of  prose  and  in  his 
own  scene,  Lucius  is  a  friend  whom  Timon  tries  to  borrow 
from ;  this  man,  on  the  contrary,  is  dunning  Timon.  The  real 
Lucius  and  Luculkis,  finally,  seem  to  appear  for  the  last  time 
at  the  mock-banquet.  They  are  not  named ;  none  of  the  guests 
are ;  but  the  excuses  which  the  first  and  second  lords  tender 
Timon  fit  Lucullus  and  Lucius  respectively. 

In  short,  our  bit  of  prose  not  only  contains  interesting  errors 
in  itself,  but  it  connects,  sometimes  through  those  errors  and 
sometimes  otherwise,  sometimes  vitally  and  sometimes  acci- 
dentally, with  almost  every  scene  in  the  first  half  of  the  play. 
Pure  accident,  of  course,  that  it  should  be  the  focus  of  the 
first  three  acts ;  but  a  lucky  accident.  An  explanation  of  the 
errors  within  the  bit  of  prose  alone  would  be  interesting,  but 
it  cannot  be  discovered  without  regard  to  the  connections,  and 
it  is  important  just  in  so  far  as  it  radiates  through  the  con- 
nections. Let  us  recapitulate  the  complications  which  the 
explanation  must  or  may  unravel.  As  to  the  bit  of  prose 
itself,  we  must  see  first  why  it  is  prose  at  all — why  it  breaks 
into  the  verse  at  an  odd  point;  then  why  two  servants  in  it 
become  three;  and  why  Flavins  turns  to  Flaminius.  Outside 
of  it  we  may  learn  something  more  about  Ventidius ;  find  the 
relation  of  the  Flavins  in  the  banquet  to  the  Flavins  here ;  get 
further  information,  certainly,  on  the  Lucius  and  Lucullus 
scenes ;  and  probably  on  the  second  dunning  scene  and  the 
mock-banquet. 

The  critics  have  not  worried  much  about  the  outside  con- 
nections of  the  bit  of  prose.  They  have  tried  mainly  to  explain 
the  blunders  that  occur  within  it.  One  explanation  has  ap- 
peased them  all:  the  blunders  fall  within  the  bit  of  prose; 
therefore  it  is  spurious.  Half  the  critics,  of  course,  construe 
it  as  a  relic  from  the  older  play  they  think  Shakspere  was 
revising.  The  others  think  it  an  addition  to  the  play  that 
Shakspere  wrote.  No  advocate  of  either  theory  has  noted 
that  the  explanation  leads  both  theories  from  the  frying-pan 
into  the  fire. 

For  suppose  the  bit  of  prose  is  from  an  older  play.  It  did 
not  stand  alone  there.    Then  we  must  think  that  when  Shak- 


64 

sperc  was  revising  the  whole  scone  Ik-  was  content  to  leave 
ten  crucial  lines  untouched,  breakinsj;  it  in  the  niiddle.  We 
must  also  believe  that  he  made  the  hhuulers ;  for  on  this 
theory  the  latter  evidently  fall,  not  in  the  prose  itself,  hut  in  the 
context  Shakspcre  wrote  before  it.  Thus  a  theory  intended 
to  accjuit  Shakspcre  of  the  blunders  only  ends  in  accusing  him 
of  them  anew,  and  this  without  attempting  to  explain  how  he 
or  any  man  couUl  naturally  have  made  them.  Over  such  a 
solution,  soon  to  disprove  itself  anyhow,  wc  need  not  linger. 

But  the  opposite  belief — that  the  prose  was  interpolated 
in  the  play — leaves  us  in  no  better  plight.  This  theory  is  Mr. 
Fleay's ;  and  his  statement  of  it  has  remained  unaltered  by 
his  followers.  Mr.  Fleay  believes  that  Shakspcre  summoned 
Flavins  and  Servilius,  to  send  them,  one  to  the  senators,  the 
other  to  \'entidius;  and  that  these  two  requests  were  all  that 
Shakspcre  wrote.  But  an  interpolator,  he  thinks,  devised  three 
more  requests — to  Lucius,  Lucullus,  and  Sempronius — and  of 
course  wrote  in  the  prose  bit  containing  them.  For  these 
errands  the  interpolator  had  to  use  the  two  servants  and  to  in- 
troduce a  third.  The  servants  thus  dispatched,  he  had  no  one 
but  the  steward  to  send  to  the  senators  and  to  Ventidius.  Inci- 
dentally he  changed  one  servant's  name  from  Flavius  to 
Flaminius. 

Although  it  gives  no  reason  for  that  change,  the  theory  has 
found  many  adherents.  Strangely  enough,  no  one  has  noticed 
that  its  basic  assumption  is  false.  Shakspcre  did  not  send  to 
the  senators.  If  he  wrote  none  of  the  prose,  he  sent  only — 
and  very  strangely,  after  just  announcing  that  he  would  "  try 
friends  " — to  Ventidius.  He  would  not  have  called  two  ser- 
vants. If  he  had,  one  of  them  would  have  been  left  on  his 
hands;  or  if  in  his  play  the  steward  went  to  Ventidius,  both 
of  them.  Unsound  at  bottom,  the  theory  thus  ends  in  a  con- 
fusion as  bad  as  that  it  started  to  explain. 

It  was  always  weak.  The  most  important  theory  that  Mr. 
Fleay  put  forth  on  Timon,  and  the  most  generally  accepted,  it 
is  still  the  most  pernicious.  For  grant — and  here  lies  the 
importance — that  the  bit  of  prose  with  the  appeals  to  Lucius, 
Lucullus,  and  Sempronius  was  added  to  the  play,  and  it  fol- 


65 

lows,  as  we  saw,  that  the  three  scenes  in  which  those  lords 
deny  them  were  also  added.  Nothing  else  is  logically  possible. 
But  this  is  to  pluck  the  very  heart  out  of  Shakspere's  play.  It 
is  to  suppose  that  he  left  out  all  motivation  for  his  last  two 
acts;  that  he  put  forth  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  a  play 
with  no  middle  to  connect  them;  that  without  showing  the 
defection  of  a  single  friend  he  made  his  generous  hero  turn 
man-hater  for  no  reason  whatsoever.  All  this  Mr.  Fleay 
thinks  Shakspere  did ;  for  as  he  prints  the  play,'^  Timon  closes 
this  scene  boasting  that  "  his  fortunes  cannot  sink  among  his 
friends,"  and  opens  the  next^  with  the  words  "  uncover,  dogs, 
and  lap,"  addressed  to  those  same  friends,  whom  he  is  now 
covering  with  curses  and  hot  water. 

Finally,  the  theory  leads  us  to  these  straits  against  esthetic 
evidence.  For  we  have  seen  that  many  of  the  critics  who 
have  followed  Mr.  Fleay  as  to  the  bit  of  prose  have  still  re- 
belled against  the  logic  which  then  forces  them  to  take  the 
Lucius  and  Lucullus  scenes  as  interpolations ;  and  not  only 
because  those  scenes  are  necessary  in  the  play,  but  because,  as 
appeared  in  the  last  chapter,  they  seem  Shaksperean.  No  such 
claim  is  made  for  the  Sempronius  scene.  But  the  logical 
necessity  has  prevailed;  only  one  critic,  and  he  in  spite  of 
logic,  has  openly  ascribed  the  scenes  to  Shakspere.'' 

Thus  both  explanations  end  in  further  complications.  Each 
leads  us  to  confusion;  neither  clears  the  premises.  We  are 
still  asking  why  the  bit  of  prose  obtrudes  itself  in  the  wrong 
place ;  why  the  two  servants  were  changed  to  three ;  why 
Flavins  was  turned  into  Flaminius ;  what  he  has  to  do  with  the 
other  Flavins  in  the  banquet  scene;  how  we  can  explain  our 
bit  of  prose  so  as  to  give  the  Lucius  and  Lucullus  scenes  to 
Shakspere,  but  the  Sempronius  scene  to  the  other  author; 
and  all  the  other  questions  with  which  we  started.  Neither 
explanation  answers  any  of  the  questions.  The  refutation 
of  them  both,  however,  has  made  the  way  clear  for  a  third 
theory. 

''New  Shakspere  Society   Transactions,   1874. 

*  The  verse  of  the  mock-banquet ;  the  five  and  a  half  scenes  intervening 
Mr.  Fleay  thinks  spurious.  'See  page  41. 

6 


66 

That  theory  is  that  oiu'  hno  only  in  cur  bit  of  prose  is 
spurious;  that  notliing  but  the  iusertion  of  tliat  Hue  made 
prose  of  the  rest  of  it,  which  Shakspere  wrote  and  wrote  in 
verse;  and  that  in  the  passage  as  he  wrote  it  tliere  was  no  more 
contradiction  in  the  names  and  number  of  the  servants  than 
appears  in  the  c|uotation  now  to  be  made. 

The  hunting  trip  of  Timon  and  Lucullus  was  not  Sliak- 
spere's  device.  The  other  author  jijlanned  it  in  his  banquet 
scene.^**  If  that  author  wrote  last — which  we  may  assume 
in  order  to  prove — one  clause  in  the  mooted  bit  of  prose  must, 
then,  be  his — "  I  hunted  with  his  honour  to-day."  "  You  to 
Sempronius  " — the  next  words — must  be  his  also,  if,  as  almost 
all  agree,  he  inserted  the  Sempronius  scene.  Let  the  nine 
words  be  extracted : 

"  Timon.     Within    there  !     Flavius  !     Servilius  ! 
Enter  the  Servants. 

Ser.  My  lord  ? 

My  lord? 

Tim.  I  will  dispatch  you  severally: 

You  to  Lord  Lucius ;  to  Lord  Lucullus  you ; 
Commend   me   to   their  loves,   and   I    am   proud,   say, 
That  my  occasions  have  found  time  to  use  'em 
Toward  a  supply  of  money.     Let  the  request 
Be  fifty  talents. 

Flav.  As  you  have  said,  my  lord. 

Stew.     Lord  Lucius  and  Lucullus  !     Humh  !  " 

One  line  out,  the  passage  settles  into  blank  verse.  Even  the 
pieces  of  the  broken  lines  fit.  So,  we  may  be  sure,  Shakspere 
wrote  it.  Such  a  reconstruction  is  not  possible  by  accident. 
But  mark  how  all  the  evidence  confirms  the  reconstruction, 
and  how  the  blunders  now  explain  themselves.  When  Timon 
announced  that  he  was  going  to  "  try  friends,"  he  did  not  mean 
Ventidius  alone,  but  Lucius  and  Lucullus  also.  But  when  the 
steward  sneered  at  these  two  lords — "  Lord  Lucius  and  Lucul- 
lus !   Humh !  " — he  had  no   Sempronius  to  sneer  at.     Shak- 

"I,  ii,  192.  The  steward,  in  his  short  soliloquy  at  the  opening  of  the 
dunning  scene,  does  indeed  say  that  Timon  is  coming  in  "  from  hunting." 
But  it  was  the  inferior  author  who  took  the  hint,  connected  Lucullus  with 
the  hunt,  and  issued  the  latter's  invitation  to  it  in  the  banquet  scene. 


67 

spere  had  written  the  requests  to  Lucius  and  Lucullus,  and 
those  only.  To  these  lords  he  had  sent  Flavius  and  Servilius, 
reserving  the  steward  for  the  proposed  errand  to  the  senators, 
and  for  the  actual  one  to  Ventidius.  The  second  author — 
for  we  may  now  call  him  so  with  confidence — left  the  servants 
to  those  missions.  He  only  introduced  one  more  request,  to 
Sempronius,  and  one  more  servant  to  bear  it.  He  did  not 
take  the  trouble  to  make  Timon  call  this  third  servant,  but 
merely  changed  the  stage-direction  so  as  to  let  three  servants 
enter;  and  indeed  he  seems  to  have  ignored  the  line  where 
Timon  calls  the  servants,  for  he  left  the  name  of  Flavius 
standing  in  that  line,  although  he  changed  it  to  Flaminius  a  few 
lines  below — for  a  reason  of  which  we  shall  speak  in  a  moment. 
He  left  the  third  servant  nameless.  When  the  latter  gets  to 
Sempronius  he  is  merely  "  a  third  servant  " ;  and  Sempronius 
himself  has  to  be  explained  as  "  another  of  Timon's  friends." 

Here  the  argument  gets  beyond  the  present  scene.  The 
fact  that  Shakspere  cleared  the  way  for  the  Lucius  and  Lucul- 
lus scenes  dispels  the  logical  necessity  which,  against  esthetic 
evidence,  has  forced  ascription  of  those  scenes  to  the  interpo- 
lator; rather  it  shifts  the  logical  necessity  to  Shakspere's  side 
and  forces  us  to  follow  the  esthetic  judgment  that  those  scenes 
are  his.  But  the  fact  that  the  interpolator  added  the  request 
to  Sempronius  makes  it  sure  that  he  added  also,  as  esthetic 
judgment  indicates,  the  Sempronius  scene. 

About  this  scene  another  fact  is  fairly  sure.  When  Shak- 
spere made  Timon  beg  of  Lucius,  Lucullus,  and  Ventidius,  he 
doubtless  meant  to  show  the  faithlessness  of  all  three  friends. 
To  that  of  Lucius  and  Lucullus  he  devotes  two  scenes.  That 
of  Ventidius — the  man  Timon  redeemed  from  jail — would 
have  made  a  climactic  third  scene.  Surely  Shakspere  meant  to 
write  that  scene;  and  there  is  therefore  a  presumption  that  he 
actually  wrote  it.  Now  the  second  author  had  good  reason  to 
cut  the  scene  if  it  was  before  him.  We  have  seen  how  he  had 
nullified  it.  Having  made  Ventidius  previously  offer  to  return 
Timon's  loan  unasked,  he  could  hardly  show  him  spurning  an 
appeal  for  the  money  in  a  later  scene.  It  is  altogether  prob- 
able that  that  scene  was  before  him  in  Shakspere's  writing; 


68 

that  he  cut  it  ami  replaced  it  with  his  own  ScinprDiiiiis  scene 
— making  some  effort  to  npair  tlie  hreak  hy  just  mentioning 
therein  that  \"enti(Hus  hail  proveil  faithless;  ami  that  these 
were  the  only  reasons  why  he  hriMij^ht  Sempronius  into  the 
play  at  all. 

Sempronius  is  mentioned  only  once  again — in  the  second 
dunning  scene.  That  scene  we  have  already  given,  on  the 
surest  evidence,  to  the  interpolator.  The  mention  of  Sem- 
pronius in  it  clinches  the  ascription ;  the  name  would  mean 
nothing  unless  written  by  the  man  who  had  already  added 
Sempronius  to  the  play.  Even  so  it  is  obscure  enough ;  for 
the  reference  is  to  Sempronius  Ullorxa}'^  What  this  new 
name  means  is  past  finding  out.  But  one  thing  is  sure :  Sem- 
pronius, with  or  without  his  weird  cognomen,  was  never  in 
Shakspere's  play.  Moreover,  the  strange  Lucius  of  this  scene 
gives  evidence  that  the  scene  was  added.  He  is  not  the  Lucius 
of  two  scenes  back;  and  that  Lucius  we  have  just  found  to 
be  Shakspere's  character.  This  one  must  be  the  other  author's 
— whether  intended  for  the  same  character  or  not. 

Among  the  guests  at  the  mock-banquet,  two  scenes  further 
on,  Lucius  and  Lucullus  apparently  appear  once  more.  They 
are  nameless;  but  their  excuses  betray  them.  Nothing  betrays 
Sempronius ;  he  is  not  present.  Perhaps  the  facts  do  not 
warrant  dogmatism ;  but  as  Shakspere's  two  characters  are 
present  at  the  mock-banquet,  and  the  other  author's  character 
is  absent — though  that  author  took  pains  to  invite  him^^ — one 
at  least  inclines  to  think  that  Shakspere  wrote  the  prose,  as 
we  know  he  wrote  the  verse,  of  the  mock-banquet. 

We  must  now  complete  the  circuit  by  returning  to  the  first 
banquet;  for  the  one  thing  v/e  have  left  unsolved  about  our 
bit  of  prose — why  Flavins  was  altered  to  Flaminius — has  a 
bearing,  as  we  thought,  upon  that  scene.  We  began  with  the 
assumption  that  the  scene  was  an  interpolation.  The  clearest 
evidence  of  style  and  meter,  with  the  many  blunders  in  the 

"III,  iv,  112.  The  acme  of  subtlety  is  attained  in  Leo's  labored  argu- 
ment that  Ullorxa  =:  Vliorxa  =  Vliorxa=:  Five  pounds  or  ten  angels ! 
See  Jahrbuch,  XVI,  400. 

"Ill,  iv,  112. 


scene,  proclaimed  it  spurious ;  and  the  subversion  of  the  Ven- 
tidius  plot  in  it  left  little  doubt  that  it  was  added  to  the  play. 
So  we  took  the  hunting  trip  projected  in  this  scene,  applied  it 
to  the  bit  of  prose  we  were  discussing,  and  found  the  line 
which,  extracted,  left  the  prose  verse.  Our  argument  now 
returns  upon  itself  to  prove  that  the  banquet  scene,  as  we  as- 
sumed, is  an  interpolation. 

The  matter  is  simple.  Throughout  the  banquet  scene  the 
steward  is  named  Flavins.  Shakspere  never  gave  him  any 
name;  on  the  contrary,  he  made  Timon,  while  talking  with 
the  steward,  call  another  servant  named  Flavius.^^  It  will  not 
be  held  that  Shakspere  forgot  the  names  of  his  own  characters. 
The  man  who  called  the  steward  Flavius  in  the  banquet  scene 
must  have  been  the  other  author.  And  it  is  easy  to  guess — 
though  it  makes  little  difference — how  he  made  the  error. 
Casting  about  for  the  name  of  the  steward  he  was  introducing, 
he  probably  remembered,  or  looked  ahead  and  saw,  that  in 
later  scenes  the  name  Flavius  was  prominent  as  that  of  a  re- 
tainer of  Timon's ;  and  the  steward  being  anonymous,  he  mis- 
took that  name  for  the  steward's,  and  so  wrote  it  in  the  banquet 
scene.  When  he  came,  however,  to  those  later  scenes,  he  saw 
his  error.  Therefore  he  changed  Flavins,  in  the  last  scene  of 
the  second  act,  and  in  the  first  scene  of  the  third,  to  Flaminius. 
But  the  very  first  occurrence  of  it — where  Timon  calls  the 
servants  to  go  to  his  friends — he  overlooked.  And  that  oc- 
currence  tells   the   tale.^* 

One  step  further  and  the  argument  is  closed.  Shakspere 
must  have  written  the  dunning  scene.  He  presupposes  it. 
The  scene  we  have  now  demonstrated  to  be  his,  where  Timon 
sends  to  borrow  of  the  lords,  depends  upon  it,  is  impossible 
without  it,  and  indeed  explicitly  refers  back  to  it;  for  Timon 
orders  that  the  borrowed  money  be  given  to  the  "  fellows  " 

"II,  ii,  194. 

"  It  may  be  repeated  that  this  Flavins,  being  metrical,  is  not  a  misprint 
for  Flaminius.  Even  if  it  were,  the  argument  would  not  suffer  ;  for  the 
man  who  gave  a  name  in  the  banquet  scene  to  the  steward  whom  Shakspere 
everywhere  left  nameless  was  the  second  author,  however  he  made  the 
mistake. 


that  have  chiniu-il  him.'*  A  scene  iiuhspensahle  in  Shak- 
spero's  play,  one  he  presupposes  and  refers  to.  cainmt  he  in- 
terpolateil ;  and  in  giving  it  to  Shakspere  we  merely  certify, 
again,  esthetic  cviilence.  It  is  almost  supererogation  to  go  on 
to  say  that  the  little  scene  preceding  and  preparing  for  the 
dunning  is  evidently  Shakspere's  also.  It  is  ccjually  unneces- 
sary to  argue  further  that  the  foolery  of  Apemantus,  follow- 
ing the  dunning,  is  the  second  author's,  since  we  have  already 
seen  that  this  foolery  cannot  possihly  have  been  written  by 
the  man  who  wrote  the  dunning  itself.^"  In  both  these  pas- 
sages, moreover,  the  esthetic  evidence — in  the  first  for  Shak- 
spere, in  the  other  for  the  second  writer — was  strong  enough 
to  be  held  final. 

Let  us  take  stock  of  what  we  have  done.  Perhaps  the 
mass  of  arguments  that  we  collected  upon  evidence  of  style  and 
meter  begins  to  shape  itself  to  something  like  a  pyramid.  Its 
base  lay  in  the  division  of  the  play  made  in  the  last  chapter; 
its  apex  points  to  the  single  interpolated  line  in  the  last  scene 
of  the  second  act.  To  begin  we  let  the  evidence  of  style  and 
meter  set  apart  the  spurious  from  the  genuine  without  regard 
to  any  theory  as  to  how  they  had  been  put  together.  The 
style  and  meter  spoke  decisively  at  many  points ;  a  little  less 
than  finally  at  others ;  dubiously  at  only  two ;  and  at  all  they 
spoke  together.  Taking  the  most  certain  cases,  we  then  saw 
the  natural  explanation  of  the  play  to  be  the  theory  that  the 
unknown  author  followed  Shakspere.  The  treatment  of  Ven- 
tidius  by  the  two  authors  fortified  that  theory.  The  discov- 
ery of  the  single  interpolated  line  put  it  beyond  reasonable 
dispute. 

Meanwhile  we  had  checked  ofif  the  ascriptions  previously 
made  on  grounds  of  style  and  meter.  The  way  the  two  au- 
thors handled  Ventidius  certified  Shakspere's  hand  in  the 
first  scene  of  the  play  and  in  the  last  scene  of  the  second  act; 
the  interpolator's  in  the  banquet  scene  and  the  Sempronius 
scene.  The  single  interpolated  line,  with  its  connections,  did 
more.  It  proclaimed  again  that  the  banquet  scene  is  the  in- 
terpolator's.    It  showed  the  second  act — the  foolery  of  Ape- 

"  II,  ii,  238.  ">  See  page  38. 


71 

mantus,  added  to  the  dunning  scene,  and  the  single  line  itself, 
excepted — to  be  Shakspere's.  In  the  third  act  it  gave  the 
Lucius  and  Lucullus  scenes  to  Shakspere,  and  therewith 
bridged  the  gap  yawning  in  his  play;  argued  that  the  Sem- 
pronius  and  the  second  dunning  scenes  are  interpolations,  and 
that  the  former  probably  supplants  a  Ventidius  scene  that 
Shakspere  wrote ;  and  finally  made  it  likely  that  the  prose  of 
the  mock-banquet  is  Shakspere's  work. 

In  every  scene  they  reach,  the  arguments  have  ratified  esthe- 
tic judgment.  On  every  part  of  every  scene  all  the  kinds  of 
evidence  agree.  Only  one  scene  in  the  first  three  acts  do  the 
later  arguments  leave  untouched — the  banishment  of  Alcibi- 
ades.  Happily  that  is  the  one  scene  of  the  play  which  we  are 
most  certain  was  interpolated.  Happily,  too,  that  very  scene 
will  start  us  on  an  argument  which  will  take  us  through  the 
last  two  acts,  and  which  will,  returning,  once  more  argue  it  in- 
terpolated. 

HI 

It  is  hoped  that  the  last  argument  answered  the  questions 
raised;  it  will  almost  be  sufficient  if  the  one  now  opening  does 
no  more  at  present  than  raise  certain  other  questions.  These 
are  not,  primarily,  questions  of  authorship;  for  merely  to 
decide  the  authorship  of  the  two  acts  remaining,  further  argu- 
ment is  scarcely  necessary.  All  but  some  two  hundred  lines 
in  the  two  acts,  as  we  have  seen,  is  Shakspere's  unmistakably. 
The  spurious  passages  are  few  and  patent ;  and  except  in  one 
scene  we  have  fixed  their  limits  to  the  very  line.  Corrobora- 
tion of  any  of  these  facts  is  therefore  only  incidental  to  the 
argument  that  follows.  The  chief  aim  of  the  argument  is  to 
show  that  Shakspere  seems  to  have  left  out  one  important 
link  in  the  chain  of  plot  in  Timon;  and  that  the  interpolator 
supplied  in  its  place  a  link  that  Shakspere  never  intended,  and 
thus  seriously  changed  the  meaning  of  the  play.  What  Shak- 
spere himself  may  have  meant  to  supply  will  be  a  question 
that  will  then  arise;  and  though  an  attempt  to  answer  it  must 
be  deferred  to  the  next  chapter,  we  shall  do  well  at  least  to 
throw  the  question  open  at  this  point  in  our  argument. 


72 

In  the  plot  of  Timon,  taken  by  and  large,  the  critics  have 
found  two  main  gaps.  The  first — the  lack  of  motivation  for 
Timon's  change  of  nature — we  have  filled.  For  as  long  as  it 
was  held  that  all  the  scenes  in  which  his  friends  deny  him  were 
inteq^olated.  the  misanthropy  of  Timon  had  no  motive,  and 
Shakspere's  play  was  cloven  through  the  middle.  P>ut  we 
have  found  that  two  of  these  scenes  are  Shakspere's,  and  that 
the  third  replaces,  probably,  a  better  scene  of  his.  Shakspcre 
did  motivate  his  misanthrope.  But  what  then?  Timon  goes 
oflf  to  the  woods,  curses  the  friends  and  enemies  who  visit  him, 
and  dies.  Meanwhile  his  friend  Alcibiades,  for  reasons  of 
his  own,  musters  troops  and  marches  upon  Athens.  Passing 
Timon  on  the  way,  he  parleys  somewhat  with  him,  and  out  of 
pity  adds  the  misanthrope's  cause  to  his  own.  Therefore  when 
he  conquers  Athens  he  declares  that  Timon's  enemies  shall 
fall  with  his.  Just  herein  has  been  found  the  second  great 
fault  of  the  play.  Critics  have  held  that  Timon's  troubles 
were  domestic  matters ;  that  he  suffered  little  or  nothing  from 
the  state;  and  that  the  downfall  of  the_stateJ_s_thereiore.no 
revenge  for  him^  But  even  if  it  were,  it  is  but  incidental  to 
the  revenge  of  Alcibiades ;  and  so  hardly  natural  and  certainly 
unsatisfactory.  It  is  hardly  natural  because  we  can  see  no 
great  reason  why  Alcibiades  should  avenge  Timon.  It  is  cer- 
tainly unsatisfactory  because  in  the  first  place  the  revenge 
falls  rather  on  the  state  which  has  done  Timon  little  wrong 
than  on  the  private  friends  who  have  played  him  utterly  false  ; 
and  in  the  second  place  because  even  this  avengement  of  the 
hero,  instead  of  being  Alcibiades'  chief  motive,  is  only  sub- 
sidiary to  his  revenge  for  himself.  In  a  word,  we  want  a 
better  reason  why  Timon  should  be  revenged  upon  the  state 
of  Athens ;  a  better  reason  why  Alcibiades  should  be  the  instru- 
ment of  that  revenge ;  in  fact  so  good  a  reason  that  Alcibiades 
w-ill  make  that  revenge,  and  not  his  own,  the  leading  motive  of 
his  crusade.  If  Shakspere  meant  to  give  us  these,  he  certainly 
fell  short  of  his  intention;  he  left  a  gap  in  his  play.  We  shall 
soon  see  how  the  interpolator  tried  to  fill  that  gap,  and  we  shall 
find  ourselves  inquiring  then  how  Shakspere  may  have  meant 
to  fill  it.     The  latter  question  is  not  without  its  dangers;  we 


73 

are  much  less  safe  in  looking  for  what  Shakspere  may  have 
left  out  of  his  play  than  we  have  been  so  far  in  speaking  of 
what  he  put  into  it;  yet  if  any  traces  of  his  plan  in  this  regard 
are  to  be  found  they  may  be  presented  for  the  reader's  judg- 
ment. Let  us  therefore  see  what  evidence  there  is  that  Shak- 
spere planned  to  make  the  wrongs  of  Timon  largely  public, 
and  the  downfall  of  the  state  a  full  and  natural  avengement 
of  them ;  and  that  he  also  meant  to  make  Alcibiades  the  nat- 
ural instrument  of  that  revenge. 

In  his  very  first  scene  Shakspere  takes  care  to  introduce  the 
senators  among  the  flattering  guests  of  Timon.  In  his  second 
he  shows  one  of  them  mistrusting  Timon's  means  and  sending 
forth  a  servant  in  harsh  terms  to  worry  Timon  for  his  debts. 
The  arrival  of  that  servant  and  two  others  is  the  beginning  of 
Timon's  fall.  But  immediately  the  hero  tries  to  stay  himself 
with  the  aid  of  the  senate :  "  Go  you,  sir,"  he  bids  the  steward, 
"  to  the  senators ; 

"  Of  whom,  even  to  the  state's  best  health,  I  have 
Deserved   this'  hearing ;   bid    'em    send   o'   the   instant 
A  thousand  talents  to  me."  II,  ii,  205. 

Twenty  times  as  much  as  he  asked  of  any  single  friend.  The 
words  in  italics  are  significant.  They  seem  to  indicate  that 
Timon  is  appealing  to  the  senate  as  a  body,  as  the  state;  they 
certainly  show  that  he  is  only  asking  repayment  for  service 
he  has  done  the  state.  What  sympathy  should  we  have  for  him 
otherwise?  But  the  steward  has  already  tried  the  senate; 
with  one  half-answer  or  another,  they  "  froze  him  into  silence."' 
"  These  old  fellows,"  rejoins  Timon,  again  implying  that  he 
was  asking  only  what  was  due  him,  "  have  their  ingratitude 
in  them  hereditary."  Therefore  in  his  mock-banquet,  the  next 
scene  of  Shakspere's  where  Timon  appears,  he  singles  them 
out  in  his  diatribe :  "  The  rest  of  your  foes,  O  gods,  the  sena- 
tors of  Athens,  together  with  the  common  leggc^'^  of  people, 
what  is  amiss  in  them,  you  gods,  make  suitable  for  destruc- 
tion." And  in  the  scene  that  follows  he  again  vents  his  spleen 
upon  the  senate : 

"The  word  is  doubtless  a  corruption   (III,  vi,  89). 


74 

"  Thou  cold   sciatica, 
Cripple  our  senators,  that  their  limhs  may  lialt 
As  lamely  as  their  manners."  I\'.  i.  23. 

But  it  is  only  wluii  wo  imiiu"  [o  Tinion's  scene  with  Alci- 
biailes  that  we  learn  tlu-  full  uuasurc  of  his  service  to  the 
state.     "  I  have  heanl,  and  grieved,"  says  Alcibiades, 

"  How  cursed  Athens,  mindless  of  thy  worth, 
Forgetting  thy  great  deeds  7chcn  neighbor  states, 
But  for  thy  szvord  and  fortune,  trod  upon  them — "       IV,  iii,  92. 

and  Timon  interrupts  him.  But  he  has  told  much.  Athens 
owes  to  Timon  nothing  less  than  its  salvation  ;  purchased  partly 
with  the  money  for  which  Timon  felt  he  had  a  right  to  ask 
again.  The  facts  are  re-echoed  by  the  senators  who  later  come 
imploring  Timon's  aid. 

"  /   Sen.     The    senators   with    one   consent   of   love 
Entreat  thee  back  to  Athens ;  who  have  thought 
On  special  dignities,  which  vacant  lie 
For  thy  best  use  and  wearing. 

2  Sen.  They  confess 

Toward  thee  forgetfulness  too  general,  gross ; 
Which  now  the  public  body,  which  doth  seldom 
Play  the  recanter,  feeling  in  itself 
A  lack  of  Timon's  aid,  hath  sense  withal 
Of  its  own  faulty  restraining  aid  to  Timon; 
***** 

I  Sen.     Therefore  so  please  thee  to  return  with  us, 
And  of  our  Athens,  thine  and  ours,  to  take 
The  captainship,  thou  shalt  be  met  with  thanks, 
Allow'd  with  absolute  power,  and  thy  good  name 
Live  with  authority ;  so  soon  shall  we  drive  back 
Of  Alcibiades  the  approaches  wild — "  V,  i,  141-169. 

Timon's  services,  their  former  thanklessness  for  which  they 
own,  have  been  great ;  so  great  that,  once  more  threatened 
with  destruction,  the  state  feels  heavily  its  need  of  him;  so 
great  that  only  a  dictatorship  of  Timon  can  now  save  the  state 
from  ruin.     Such  is  the  relation  Shakspere  meant  to  show 

"  In  the  Folio,  "  fall." 


75 

existing  between  Timon  and  the  state.  Let  us  admit  that  he 
did  not  make  it  clear  enough ;  let  us  acknowledge  that  he 
should  have  made  it  so  apparent  as  to  need  no  argument  based 
on  the  scattered  references  here  quoted ;  let  us  even  say  he 
should  have  emphasized  it  by  showing  us  some  scene  in  which 
the  senate  should  cast  off  Timon,  just  as  he  showed  us  scenes 
where  Timon's  private  friends  reject  him.  That  it  was  part 
of  Shakspere's  plan  is  still  unquestionable — though  we  may 
begin  to  question  whether  he  has  not  left  out  a^scene  in  which 
that  plan  would  have  reached  definite  expression. 

We  may  now  speak  of  Alcibiades.  In  the  first  half  of  the 
play  he  is  Timon's  closest  friend.  None  too  close,  to  be  sure, 
— that  fact  \\\\\  call  for  comment  in  a  moment — but  at  least 
the  chief  associate  of  Timon,  and  the  only  friend  that  does  not 
play  him  false.  Let  us  run  through  Shakspere's  references  to 
Alcibiades,  so  far  as  possible  forgetting  for  the  moment  what 
the  other  author  has  to  say  of  him.  In  the  first  scene  Alci- 
biades enters  last  of  Timon's  friends,  his  entrance  furnishing 
the  climax  of  the  exposition.  He  is  again  with  Timon  in  the 
dunning  scene.  He  is  certainly  not  very  prominent  so  far; 
he  has  spoken  only  two  lines ;  yet  we  have  been  allowed  to  feel 
that  he  is  Timon's  boon-companion.  But  now  begins  a  gap 
in  his  career.  It  is  true  that  we  hear  in  three  words  somewhat 
later  that  he  has  been  banished ;  we  are  not  told  why ;  and  even 
these  words  may  possibly  be  interpolated.^''  At  any  rate  we 
see  no  more  of  him  until  the  fourth  act,  where  he  suddenly 
appears  crusading  against  Athens  for  reasons  at  least  vague. 
Perhaps  we  do  not  trouble  much  about  his  reasons,  though  we 
cannot  help  feeling  that  we  ought  to  know  them.  Only  when 
he  resolves  to  take  Timon's  cause  into  his  hands,  only  when 
we  see  that  this  man  of  whom  we  know  so  little  has  been 
chosen  to  close  the  play  with  a  revenge  for  the  hero,  do  we 
begin  to  trouble  somewhat  seriously.  We  wish  that  we  could 
see  more  reason  why  he  should  avenge  Timon ;  we  feel  that 
he  should  have  been  shown  to  be  a  much  closer  friend  of 
Timon  hitherto,  that  indeed  some  bond  should  have  been  cre- 
ated between  him  and  Timon  so  strong  that  his  present  reso- 

'"  See  page  45. 


lutioti  wmiKl  bo  natural,  iiu-vitaltU'.  Tlius  iiuu-li  wo  nii<:;ht 
roasoiiably  ask.  ami  yot,  ovon  witlunit  such  a  boiul,  ovon  thout^h 
\vc  might  fool  that  Shaksporo  has  told  us  far  too  littlo  about 
Alcibiados,  wo  might  still  acooj^t  tho  latlor  as  a  fairly  natural 
avongor  if  wo  know  otily  what  Shaksporo  has  told  us  of  him. 
Tho  trouble  is,  wo  know  a  good  doal  more.  The  inteqio- 
lator  has  seen  tho  gap  just  mentioned  and  has  been  at  pains 
to  till  it  by  exhibiting  the  banishment  of  Alcibiadcs.  The 
wrongs  of  Alcibiados  himself  are  therefore  prominently  be- 
fore us ;  they  outweigh  any  other  motive  that  can  now  be 
given  for  his  crusade.  We  are  bound  to  feel  that  he  is  fight- 
ing first  and  foremost  to  avenge  himself,  and  that  his  revenge 
for  Timon  is  only  an  incident.  Just  this  feeling  we  must 
forget  if  we  would  take  the  play  as  Shakspere  wrote  it.  Shak- 
spere  leaves  us  almost  wholly  in  the  dark  about  the  wrongs  of 
Alcibiades.  He  may  have  failed  to  give  Alcibiades  sufficient 
motive  for  avenging  Timon's  cause, — we  shall  later  see  if  there 
is  any  evidence  that  he  planned  such  a  motive, — but  at  least 
he  gave  the  soldier  no  great  cause  of  his  own.  The  most  he 
makes  the  latter  say  of  his  own  grievances  is  incidental  to  a 
resolution  to  redress  those  of  Timon.  Alcibiades  is  just  start- 
ing to  promise  revenge : — "  When  I  have  laid  proud  Athens 
on  a  heap " — when  Timon  interrupts  him :  "  Warr'st  thou 
'gainst  Athens?"  "Ay,  Timon,"  he  answers,  "and  have 
cause."^°  But  that  cause  Shakspere  never  tells.  He  leaves  it 
vague  because  it  is  immaterial  in  his  plot ;  because  to  lay  stress 
on  it  would  subvert  the  plot ;  in  a  word,  because  he  must 
make  Alcibiades  the  avenger  of  Timon's  wrongs  rather  than 
of  his  own.  Therefore  he  ignores  every  grievance  of  Alci- 
biades, and  emphasizes  every  tie  between  him  and  Timon,  in 
the  remainder  of  the  play.  Thus  half  the  second  scene  of  the 
last  act  is  used  to  show  how  Alcibiades  has  made  common 
cause  with  Timon.     Says  the  messenger  to  the  senators  there : 

"  I  met  a  courier,  one  mine  ancient  friend, 
Whom,^  though  in  general  part  we  were  opposed. 
Yet  our  old  love  made  a  particular  force, 

»IV,   iii,    loi. 

°  The  sentence  is  not  strictly  grammatical. 


77 

And   made  us   speak   like   friends.     This   man   was   riding 

From  Alcibiades  to  Timon's  cave 

With  letters  of  entreaty,  which  imported 

His  fellowship  i'  the  cause  against  your  city, 

In  part  for  his  sake  mov'd."  V,  ii,  6. 

So  Alcibiades  himself,  when  he  triumphs,  couples  Timon's 
injuries  to  his  own  with  equal  emphasis.  The  senators  beg 
mercy  for  their  thanklessness  to  both : 

"  I  Sen.  Noble  and  young, 

When  thy  first  griefs  were  but  a  mere  conceit, 
Ere  thou  hadst  power  or  we  had  cause  of  fear. 
We  sent  to  thee  to  give  thy  rages  balm, 
To  wipe  out  our  ingratitude  with  loves 
Above  their  quantity. 

2  Sen.  So  did  we  woo 

Transformed  Timon  to  our  city's  love 
By  humble  message  and  by  promis'd  means. 
We  were  not  all  unkind,  nor  all  deserve 
The  common  stroke  of  war."  V,  iv,  13. 

After  more  pleading,  Alcibiades  relents : 

"  Then  there's  my  glove  ; 
Descend  and  open   your  uncharged  ports. 
Those  enemies  of  Timon's  and  mine  own 
Whom  you  yourselves  shall  set  out  for  reproof 
Fall  and  no  more  ;  "  V,  iv,  54. 

and  devotes  the  close  of  the  play  to  a  noble  eulogy  of  Timon, 
announced  dead : 

"  Though  thou  abhorr'dst  in  us  our  human  griefs, 
Scorn'dst  our  brain's  flow,  and  those  our  droplets  which 
From  niggard  nature  fall,  yet  rich  conceit 
Taught  thee  to  make  vast  Neptune  weep  for  aye 
On  thy  low  grave,  on   faults   forgiven.     Dead 
Is  noble  Timon,  of  whose  memory 
Hereafter   more."  V,   iv,    75, 

So  the  play  developed,  so  it  closed,  under  Shakspere's  hand. 
It  made  a  good  end.  Timon's  friend,  warring  upon  Athens 
for   reasons   scarcely   divulged,   takes   up  Timon's   cause   and 


78 

squares  it  in  the  conquest  of  tlio  city,  tlic  restoration  of  the 
state  to  justice,  ami  tlie  punishment  of  Timon's  enemies.  We 
ask  only  that  this  friend  have  a  greater  reason  for  his  fight  for 
Timon — that  Timon's  wrongs,  if  possihle,  he  made  the  main 
cause  of  his  fight.  Then  the  vindication  would  he  natural  and 
full.  But  the  second  author  has  rohhed  it  of  what  meaning 
Shakspere  gave  it.  He  has  displayed  the  banishment  of  Alci- 
biades  and  so  laid  stress  upon  his  sufferings  at  the  hand  of 
Athens.  He  has  made  us  feel  that  Alcihiades  fights  first  and 
foremost  in  his  own  redress.  He  has  all  l)iil  l)lin(le{l  us  to  the 
fact  that  the  only  business  of  Alcibiadcs  in  the  play — the  only 
puq")ose  he  would  serve  if  we  but  cut  the  scene  of  his  banish- 
ment— is  to  avenge  Timon.  That  end  only  did  he  serve  in 
the  play  as  Shakspere  wrote  it ;  and  the  reader  of  that  play 
would  care  little  more  about  the  wrongs  of  Alcihiades  him- 
self than,  in  another  play,  he  would  about  the  wars  of 
Fortinbras. 

Let  us  repeat  the  two  things  which  the  reader  might  demand : 
that  Timon's  claim  on  Alcihiades  and  Timon's  service  to  the 
thankless  state  be  more  conspicuous  in  the  first  half  of  the  play. 
For  if  Shakspere  clearly  meant  that  Timon  should  suffer 
largely  from  the  senate's  cruelty,  he  should  have  let  us  see 
their  cruelty;  and  just  because  he  meant  to  use  Alcihiades  as 
the  natural  avenger  of  Timon,  he  should  have  made  the  bond 
between  the  two  much  stronger.  His  failure  to  do  so  has  left 
a  lacuna  in  the  play.  How  he  may  have  meant  to  fill  this 
will  be  a  question  for  us  in  the  next  chapter.  At  present  we 
may  be  assured  that  the  scene  which  misfits  the  lacuna  and 
distorts  the  motivation  of  the  last  half  of  the  play  is  the  inter- 
polation which  its  style  and  meter  brand  it. 

IV 
Perhaps  a  simpler  argument  for  Shakspere's  priority  will 
now  be  welcome.  At  twenty  points,  as  we  found  before  at- 
tempting to  divide  the  play  between  the  authors,  Timon  fol- 
lows a  source.  A  glance  through  the  play  as  now  divided  will 
reveal  the  signal  fact  that  every  point  of  the  twenty  falls 
within  a  scene  which  Shakspere  wrote — that  every  episode  or 


79 

line  for  which  a  source  is  known  comes  from  his  pen.  The 
fact  will  be  clearest  from  the  table  of  the  sources  in  a  former 
chapter.  Comment  on  it  may  be  brief.  This  single  truth 
would  deal  a  death-blow  to  the  theory  that  Shakspere's  was 
the  second  hand  in  Timon.  Shakspere  built  the  play  upon  the 
sources.  The  other  author  had  no  source,  though  frequently 
he  seems  to  take  a  cue  from  Shakspere.  That  Shakspere 
wrote  first  follows  irresistibly.  Taking  more  or  less  from  one 
source  or  another  in  almost  every  scene  he  wrote,  he  pieced 
together  the  entire  plot.  The  other  author  merely  ran  amuck 
with  hints  he  took  from  Shakspere;  and  so  far  from  adding 
to  the  plot,  upset  it. 

V 

Quite  as  simple  is  the  final  and  crucial  test.  If  Shakspere 
had  rewritten  two-thirds  of  an  older  Timon  but  left  one-third 
of  it  standing,  the  scenes  and  passages  which  he  rewrote  would 
presumably  be  dovetailed  with  the  scenes  and  passages  which 
he  let  stand.  Even  if  they  were  but  loosely  integrated,  cer- 
tainly some  scene  of  his  would  somewhere  depend,  for  motiva- 
tion or  for  clarity,  on  something  said  or  done  in  one  of  the 
older  scenes.  At  the  very  least,  some  passage  that  Shakspere 
rewrote  would  contain  a  reference  to  something  in  a  passage 
he  preserved.  The  opposite  is  all  but  unthinkable — that  he 
could  or  would  have  rewritten  two- thirds  of  a  play  and  in  the 
operation  have  cut  all  the  connections  with  the  other  third  he 
was  incorporating. 

Let  us  see  what  the  connections  of  the  spurious  scenes  are. 
First,  the  banquet:  not  one  event  that  takes  place  in  it  is  ever 
mentioned  by  Shakspere.  The  single  later  line  referring  to  it 
is  the  other  author's.-'  Leave  the  scene  out,  and  no  word  of 
Shakspere's  tells  of  the  omission.  So,  naturally,  with  the 
clownage  added  to  the  dunning  scene ;  the  page  and  fool,  and 
their  mistresses  and  letters,  are  never  heard  of  again.  If  we 
take  them  out,  the  dunning  scene  will  close,  and  the  conference 
of  Timon  with  the  steward  open — after  an  intermission ;  and 

^  Timon,  sending  to  Lucullus  for  money,  says,  "I  hunted  witli  his 
honour  to-day  "  (interpolated  line,  II,  ii,  198)  ;  connecting  with  the  invita- 
tion to  the  hunt  received  in  the  banquet  scene. 


80 

no  one  wouKl  svispcct  lliat  anvthinjj  had  over  conic  l)ct\vocn. 
As  for  the  Senipronius  scene,  we  have  noted  already  that 
Senijironius  was  never  mentioned  by  Shakspere.  Leave  out 
the  interpolator's  references  t©  him,  and  we  should  never 
dream  that  a  Senipronius  had  been  in  the  play.  Omit  the 
second  dunning  scene,  and  nothing  tells  that  Timon  has  passed 
through  the  added  trial.  And  so  we  come  to  the  banishment 
of  Alcibiades — one  spurious  scene,  at  last,  that  Shakspere 
might  be  thought  to  show  some  knowledge  of.  We  are  not 
absolutely  certain,  to  be  sure,  that  Shakspere  presupposed  the 
banishment  of  Alcibiades.  As  we  trace  Alcibiades'  career 
through  the  last  two  acts  we  find  him  saying  that  he  "  has 
cause"  to  war  on  Athens;  and  we  find  a  senator  informing 
him  that  those  persons  are  no  longer  living  who  were  the 
reason  why  he  "  first  went  out."-^  The  expressions  are  vague. 
If,  however,  Shakspere  wrote  the  prose  of  the  mock-banquet, 
as  is  probable,  he  did  make  one  explicit,  though  unobtrusive, 
mention  of  the  banishment.  "  Alcibiades  is  banished,"  is  a 
sentence  in  that  scene;-*  and  if  Shakspere  wrote  it,  he  certainly 
assumed  that  Alcibiades  had  been  exiled.  But  we  may  still 
doubt  whether  he  assumed  that  a  banishment  scene  had  been 
shown ;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  he  did  not  assume  that  this 
particular  scene  now  in  the  play,  where  Alcibiades  is  banished 
in  behalf  of  his  friend  the  murderer,  had  been  shown.  We 
have  found  that  this  scene  was  interpolated  in  the  play  after 
Shakspere  wrote ;  and  Shakspere's  reference  to  the  banish- 
ment must  have  suggested  it,  not  presupposed  it.  With  the 
rest  of  the  insertions  we  have  easy  work.  Cut  off  the  soliloquy 
of  the  steward  after  the  parting  of  the  servants,  and  the 
steward  follows  Timon  anyhow.  Take  out  the  jokes  of  Timon 
and  Apemantus  in  their  scene  at  Timon's  cave,  and  two  lines 
of  Shakspere's  come  together  which  no  one  would  imagine 
had  ever  been  separated.  Omit  the  suspected  portions  of  the 
steward's  visit  to  Timon,  and  the  scene  will  stand.  Leave  out, 
finally,  the  little  scene  in  which  the  soldier  copies  the  inscrip- 
tion on  Timon's  tomb;  when  the  epitaph  is  brought  in  at  the 
end,  the  reader  will  not  feel  cheated  at  not  having  seen  the 
operation. 

^  V,  iv,  ZT.  *'III,  vi,  60. 


81 

Ten  spurious  scenes  and  passages  scattered  through  Shak- 
spere's  play  and  filling  one-third  of  it;  and  Shakspere  never 
using  them,  never  counting  on  them,  never,  except  to  suggest 
one,  making  a  mention  of  them, — unaware  of  them.  Lift 
them  bodily  from  the  play,  and  not  a  word  will  tell  that  they 
were  ever  in  it.  The  fact  is  final.  Those  scenes  and  passages 
were  no  nucleus  around  which  Shakspere  built  his  play.  They 
were  extensions  to  the  play  he  had  already  built. 


cii.\pri-:R  \- 

Siiakspi'rr's  Plot 

We  have  just  found  that  if  we  take  out  the  interpolations 
\vc  shall  have  no  evidence  in  what  remains  that  they  were 
ever  in  the  play.  We  shall  have  the  scenes  that  Shakspere 
wrote,  with  nothing  to  imply  that  anything  was  added  hy 
another  author ;  and  questions  will  immediately  occur  about 
those  scenes.  Does  Shakspere's  work  make  a  play?  In  so 
far  as  it  does,  what  is  the  nature  of  the  play?  If  it  falls  short, 
what  does  it  lack?  An  answer  to  these  questions  will  be 
easier  if  we  first  find  out  exactly  what  the  aim  and  the  effect 
of  the  interpolations  was ;  for  in  asking  how  much  the  addi- 
tions were  needed  we  shall  have  to  ask  how  much  Shakspere 
had  finished  in  the  play,  and  how  much  he  had  only  planned 
and  left  undone — how  far,  in  other  words,  his  Timon  is  com- 
plete. The  whole  problem  will  be  simpler  if  we  have  before 
us  the  substance  of  Shakspere's  plot,  w'ith  the  parts  supplied 
by  the  interpolator  bracketed. 

The  exposition  shapes   the  figure  of  a  hero  whose  great 
fortune  and  whose  gracious  nature  have  subdued  all  hearts  to 
his  command.      Senators,   lords,   artists,  merchants,   flock  to 
Timon's  lobbies.    But  their  friendship  is  hollow.    A  poet  and 
a  painter  who  bring  gifts  to  Timon  for  their  own  reward  are 
quick  to  let  us  know  that  Timon's  guests  are  but  the  trencher- 
friends  who  will  flee  from  him  in  the  evil  days  they  see  ap- 
proaching.    When  Timon  enters,  therefore,  "  addressing  him-  ,o 
self  courteously  to  every  suitor,"  we  know  he  is  addressing    [ 
sycophants.     His  first  act  is  to  pay  Ventidius  out  of  prison ;       j 
his  next  to  give-a-dow-Fyua.nasked  to  speed  a  servant's  wedding. 
Kind  words  ensue  to  all  his~parasTtes>  ;TtTey~must  needs  dine 
wnth  him.     When  he  condones  the  cynic  Apemantus,  whom 
all  others  swear  at,  the  picture  of  his  magnanimity  is  com- 
plete; and  with  a  special  welcome  to  his  friend  Alcibiades,  he 

82 


83 

leads  his  guests  in  to  dinner.  [The  interpolator  takes  the  cue 
and  writes  a  banquet  scene;  filling  it  with  hints  derived  from 
Shakspere,  and  beginning  to  undermine  the  plot  by  spoiling 
the  part  of  Ventidius,  by  confounding  the  steward  with 
another  servant,  and  by  other  blunders.] 

In  one  line  we  now  learn  that  Timon's  house  is  built  upon 
the  sand.  He  is  deep  in  debt ;  "  His  days  and  times  are  past ;  " 
and  one  creditor  is  sending  a  servant  to  demand  immediate 
satisfaction  from  him.  The  servant  comes  to  Timon  with  two 
others.  Astounded  at  the  clamor  they  raise  in  the  presence 
of  his  friends,  Timon  is  yet,  as  always,  kindly.  H  the  servants 
will  but  retire  and  let  his  steward  dine  them,  he  will  see  what 
is  the  reason  they  have  not  been  paid.  They  go  off.  [But  the 
second  writer  sends  them  back  again,  and  brings  in  Apeman- 
tus  with  two  strangers,  page  and  fool,  to  make  fun  and  con- 
fusion.] Timon  now  learns  from  the  steward  the  true  state 
of  his  purse.  It  has  been  emptied  to  his  flatterers.  But  want 
cannot  depress  him;  he  is  "wealthy  in  his  friends."  He  is 
"proud"  to  send  to  his  friends  Lucius  and  Lucullus  for  fifty 
talents  each.  [The  interpolator  makes  him  send  to  Sempro- 
nius  for  a  third  fifty.]  From  the  senate  he  can  command  a 
thousand  for  past  services ;  and  even  when  that  hope  is  shat- 
tered by  the  steward,  he  can  still  say,  "  Prithee,  man,  look 
cheerly  .  .  .  Go  to  Ventidius ; "  Ventidius  is  rich  now,  bid 
him  think  some  good  necessity  of  his  friend  craves  the  five 
talents  that  cleared  him  from  prison — 

"  Never  speak,  or  think, 
That   Timon's   fortunes   'mong   his   friends   can   sink." 

But  Lucullus,  when  approached  by  Timon's  servant,  feels 
that  "  this  is  no  time  to  lend  money,  especially  upon  bare 
friendship,  without  security " ;  and  so  he  tries  to  bribe  the 
servant  to  say  he  saw  him  not.  As  for  Lucius,  he  realizes 
"what  a  wicked  beast  he  was  to  disfurnish  himself  against 
such  a  good  time,  when  he  might  have  shown  himself  honour- 
able"; but  "he  was  just  sending  to  use  Lord  Timon  himself." 
[And  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  Shakspere  made  Ventidius 
cap  the  climax  with  excuses  still  more  artful;  l)ul   these,  if 


84 

Shakspcrc  wrote  tlu-m.  tlic  interpolator  now  displaces  with 
his  Sonipronius  anti-oliniax.  Then  he  goes  on  with  more 
dunning:  scraping  up  three  cretiitors  iniknown  to  Shakspcrc, 
ami  a  fourtli — Lucius — either  unknown  to  him,  (m-  unidentifi- 
able with  his  Lucius.  Worse  than  all,  the  author  now  inserts 
the  scene  of  Alcibiatles'  banishment,  in  which  he  quite  forgets 
the  hero  and  the  main  plot  of  the  play,  l-'or  he  feels  only  that 
he  must  give  Alcibiadcs  some  motive  for  his  fight  with  Athens, 
and  does  not  realize  that  this  motive  must  be  vitally  connected 
with  Timon's  cause ;  so  he  simply  introduces  one  more  Un- 
known— this  time  a  murderer — and  thus  gives  Alcibiades  a 
motive  which  unhinges  the  remainder  of  the  plot.  This  author 
has  little  more  to  add  now.  It  is  barely  possible  that  he  re- 
wrote the  prose  of  the  mock-banquet;  but  if  he  did,  he  added 
nothing  to  the  plot  therein.]  Shakspere  devised  the  scene 
and  wrote  at  least  the  verse  of  it,  where  Timon,  soured  by  the 
falseness  of  his  trencher-friends,  covers  them  with  shame. 
The  misanthrope  now  sets  out  for  the  woods,  hurling  his 
curses  back  to  Athens  as  he  leaves ;  and  the  scene  in  the  city 
closes  as  his  servants,  in  plaintive  affection,  part  and  go  their 
ways  [though  the  interpolator  makes  the  steward  stay  a  while 
to  plod  through  a  soliloquy]. 

We  follow  Timon  to  the  woods.  Cursing  mankind,  and 
praying  but  for  roots  to  keep  up  life,  he  spades  up  gold  enough 
to  restore  him  to  his  glory.  Restore  him  ?  Rather  to  restore 
the  leper  to  fascination,  to  exalt  thieves,  to  spice  the  ulcer- 
eaten  hag  "  to  the  April  day,"  to  "  knit  and  break  religions," 
to  "  put  odds  among  the  rout  of  nations."  The  yellow  slave 
shall  back  into  the  earth  alive,  to  mingle  with  the  ashes  of  its 
gouty  keepers.  But  nay; — for  troops  approach — perhaps  he 
can  find  a  fitter  service  for  it ;  and  he  leaves  it  out  as  Alcibiades 
enters.  Alcibiades  has  been  his  friend ;  has  used  him  without 
guile.  But  Timon's  hate  is  all-inclusive.  Alcibiades  recalls 
all  that  Timon  did  for  Athens.  "  I  prithee,  beat  thy  drum,  and 
get  thee  gone,"  rejoins  Timon.  He  offers  Timon  sympathy. 
"How  dost  thou  pity  him  whom  thou  dost  trouble?  I  had 
rather  be  alone."  He  offers  money.  "  Keep  it,  I  cannot  eat 
it."    But  finally,  about  to  go,  he  offers  revenge :  "  When  I  have 


85 

laid  proud  Athens  on  a  heap  " — Timon  cannot  wait  for  him  to 
finish:  "  Warr'st  thou  'gainst  Athens?  .  .  .  The  gods  con- 
found them  all  in  thy  conquest !  .  .  .  Put  up  thy  gold.  Go  on, 
here's  gold,  go  on  .  .  .  Let  not  thy  sword  skip  one — pity  not 
honoured  age — strike  the  counterfeit  matron — gash  the  virgin's 
cheek — mince  the  babes — cut  down  the  priests  .  .  .  There's 
gold  to  pay  thy  soldiers  .  .  .  Make  large  confusion ;  and,  thy 
fury  spent," — for  Timon  is  consistent  in  his  man-hatred — 
"  confounded  be  thyself !  "  And  Alcibiades,  though  he  will 
not  take  "  all  his  counsel,"  goes  forth  to  square  Timon's  ac- 
count with  Athens  when  he  conquers  it. 

Other  visitors  intrude.  Apemantus  comes  to  see  if  he  can- 
not persuade  Timon  to  "  be  a  flatterer  now,  and  seek  to  thrive 
by  that  which  has  undone  him ;  to  hinge  his  knee,  and  let  the 
very  breath  of  the  rascals  who  have  bled  him  blow  off  his  cap." 
Could  irony,  after  what  we  have  just  heard  Timon  say,  be 
finer?  Could  two  man-haters  be  more  nicely  balanced ?  [They 
lose  their  balance  only  when  they  both  turn  petty  rogues  and 
play-fellows  in  the  mainly  farcical  interpolation  in  the  scene.] 
Banditti  come  to  steal.  Timon  baits  them  with  a  taste  of 
treasure  that  they  may  crave  more  elsewhere,  break  more 
shops,  and  cut  more  throats — "  and  gold  confound  them  how- 
soe'er!"  The  faithful  steward  comes  to  share  his  master's 
sorrows.  "  If  thou  grant'st  thou  art  a  man,"  Timon  can  only 
say,  "  I  have  forgot  thee."  The  steward  pleads  his  innocence, 
and  Timon  is  convinced ;  he  breaks  into  tears,  and  Timon  can- 
not but  love  him.  But  Timon  can  brook  no  comrade  in  his 
man-hatred.  The  steward  may  take  gold,  live  rich,  be  happy, 
— but  he  must  away  from  Timon.  Especially  he  shall  "  build 
from  men,  hate  all,  curse  all ;  let  the  famished  flesh  slide  from 
the  bone,  ere  he  relieve  the  beggar — give  to  dogs  what  he 
denies  to  men."  [The  interpolation  or  interpolations  in  the 
steward's  visit  do  not  change  the  substance  of  it.]  The  syco- 
phant poet  and  painter  come  next.  They  have  heard  that 
Timon  is  "  full  of  gold  " ;  and  think  it  not  amiss  to  tender  their 
love  and  some  soft  promises.  Timon  plays  them  on  his  hook 
a  while,  snaps  them  up  short,  and  beats  them  out — but  banes 
them  with  his  gold.    Last  come  the  senators  of  Athens,  fright- 


ciicd  with  iiiipciuliiij^  niiii.  Will  Tiinon  f()i\i;\'l  llic  wroiiij^s 
they  iliil  him,  ccmuc  haoU  imw  to  lioiiors,  love,  and  wealth  in 
Athens,  take  the  fichl  for  thcin  with  ahst)lutc  power,  and  drive 
ort"  Alcihiailes?  "Lend  nie  a  fool's  heart,  and  a  woman's 
eyes,"  he  answers  them,  "and  I'll  heweep  these  comforts, 
wi">rthy  senate»rs." 

"If  Alcibiadcs  kill  my  countrymen, 
Let  Alcibiades  know  this  of  Timon, 
That  Timon  cares  not.     But  if  he  sack   fair  Athens, 
And  take  our  goodly  aged  men  by  the  beards, 
Giving  our  holy  virgins  to  the  stain 
Of  contumelious,  beastly,  mad-brained  war, 
Then  let  him  know,  and  tell  him  Timon  speaks  it, 
In  pity  of  our  aged  and  our  youth, 
I  cannot  choose  but  tell  him  that  I  care  not, 
And  let  him  take't  at  worst."  V,  i,  172. 

But  Still  he  is  not  quite  unfeeling: 

"  I  have  a  tree  which  grows  here  in  my  close, 
That  mine  own  use  invites  me  to  cut  down, 
And  shortly  must  I  fell  it ;  tell  my  friends. 
Tell  Athens,  in  the  sequence  of  degree 
From  high  to  low  throughout,  that  whoso  please 
To  stop  affliction,  let  him  take  his  haste. 
Come  hither  ere  my  tree  hath  felt  the  axe. 
And  hang  himself.     I  pray  you,  do  my  greeting." 

V,  i,  208. 

Having  so  devoted  Athens  to  destruction,  and  having  scattered 
his  gold  where  it  would  do  most  harm,  Timon  retires  to  write 
his  epitaph  and  dig  his  grave: 

'■  Graves  only  be  men's  works  and  death  their  gain ! 
Sun,  hide  thy  beams !     Timon  hath  done  his  reign." 

V,    i,    225 

The  rest  happens  quickly.  The  senators  in  Athens  arc  in 
turmoil  when  they  learn  not  only  that  their  hope  of  Timon's 
aid  is  dead,  but  that  Alcibiades  is  fighting  Timon's  cause. 
They  prepare  to  make  what  terms  they  can  with  the  con- 


87 

queror,  who,  [the  ten-hne  scene  of  the  soldier  seeking  Timon 
being  left  out,]  is  before  the  gates.  Their  humble  pleas  for 
mercy  and  their  manifold  excuses  for  their  wrongs  to  Alci- 
biades  and  Timon  induce  the  conqueror  to  "'  use  the  olive  with 
his  sword."  Only  the  foremost  enemies  of  Timon  and  himself 
shall  fall.    Athens  is  saved,  restored  to  peace  and  justice. 

But  Timon  does  not  live,  he  did  not  care  to  live,  to  know 
the  end.  He  was  done  with  man.  An  epitaph  is  all  the  mes- 
sage Alcibiades'  courier  brings  from  him : 

"  Here  lie  I,  Timon,  who,  alive,  all  living  men  did  hate. 
Pass  by  and  curse  thy  fill,  but  pass  and  stay  not  here  thy  gait." 

V,  iv,  72. 

"  These  well  express  in  him  his  latter  spirits ;  "  but  a  magnifi- 
cent eulogy,  closing  the  play,  does  justice  to  the  noble  Timon 
of  other  days. 

Leaving  out  the  portions  bracketed,  we  have  here  the  sub- 
stance of  the  plot  as  Shakspere  planned  it.  If  we  put  our- 
selves in  the  interpolator's  place,  we  must  acknowledge  that 
we  have  to  deal  with  a  peculiar  play.  In  the  first  place  the 
play  lacks  certain  features  which,  while  they  may  be  nothing 
more  than  stage-requirements, — while  they  might  not  con- 
tribute largely  in  developing  the  actual  plot,  while  their  absence 
may  indeed  leave  no  omission  whatsoever  in  the  plot  itself, 
— were  yet  all  but  essential  to  a  play  intended  for  the  theater 
of  Shakspere's  time.  In  the  second  place  there  seem  to  be 
some  missing  steps  in  the  development  of  the  plot  proper. 
Let  us  illustrate  both  faults.  The  first  thing  we  notice  about 
Shakspere's  Timon  is  its  brevity.  The  play  is  seven-tenths  as 
long  as  Macbeth,  the  next  shortest  tragedy;  the  interpolations 
make  up  just  about  the  other  three-tenths.  In  variety  the 
drama  lacks  as  much,  moreover,  as  in  length.  There  are  no 
women  in  it  except  two  courtesans  who  play  minor  parts  in 
one  scene  only.^  Shakspere's  company  was  fitted  to  present 
two  or  three  important  female  characters,  and  in  all  his  oilier 
plays  he  furnished  them ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  a  play 

MV,  iii. 


88 

without  rt  woman  is  a  tara  ax'is.  Ai,'aiii.  except  in  the  last  half 
of  tlio  tirst  scone,  Shakspcrc  gives  the  play  practically  no  comic 
rcUcf;  a  feature  which  liis  audience  expected  and  he  usually 
supplied.  We  know  how  he  jirovided  comedy,  perhaps  almost 
went  out  of  his  way  for  it,  in  IloDilct  and  Macbeth;  how  in 
Lear  he  made  it  copiously  subserve  the  deepest  pathos.  Now 
here  in  Timon  he  has  made  as  fine  a  chance  for  wit  as  a  grave- 
iligger  or  a  porter  or  a  jester  could  atYord  him — a  chance  to 
make  Apemantus  immortal.  But  he  fails  to  improve  it.  His 
Apemantus  only  has  a  little  fun  in  the  first  scene- — then  dis- 
appears until  the  fourth  act,  where,  in  Shakspere's  part  at 
least,  he  is  naturally  anything  but  comic.  Lack  of  fun,  how- 
ever, is  not  the  main  insufficiency  one  feels  in  Apemantus' 
character.  Shakspere  hardly  acquaints  us  with  the  man  at  all 
before  the  fourth  act,  introducing  him  only  in  the  opening 
scene;  but  in  the  fourth  act  brings  him  on  as  if  we  knew  him 
well — even  letting  him  warn  Timon  not  to  assume  "  his  like- 
ness." We  scarcely  know  his  likeness ;  and  we  arc  inclined 
to  think  that  Shakspere  must  have  meant  to  show  us  more  of 
it,  and  to  improve  the  splendid  chance  it  gave  for  the  creation 
of  a  character,  in  the  first  three  acts.  The  case  of  Alcibiades 
is  similar — and  here  at  least  w^e  come  to  what  seems  an  omis- 
sion in  the  plot  itself.  Alcibiades  is  present  in  the  first  scene 
and  in  the  dunning  scene,  though  very  little  more  than  merely 
present ;  then  he  too  disappears  until  the  fourth  act,  where  he 
comes  forth  playing  an  important  and  ra'lhrf "  startling  part. 
For  some  reason  we  can  hardly  guess  at,  he  is  fighting  against 
Athens;  and  for  reasons  which  we ^d  are  insufficient,  he  re- 
solves to  fight  in  ^pa.rt  for  Timon.  It  i^s  very  hard  to  think 
that  Shakspere  did  not  mean  to  give  us  all  these  reasons 
earlier  in  the  play;  that  he  dicl  hot"  see  the  need,  especially, 
of  so  relating  Alcibiades  to  Timon  previously  as  to  explain 
the  part  the  soldier  is  now  playing;  that  he  did  not  plan  to 
make  his  Alcibiades  a  character  of  some  importance  in  the 
first  three  acts.  Even  if  Alcibiades  had  the  best  reason  for 
avenging  Timon,  finally,  we  should  still  want  to  know  why 

^  Unless — as  is  improbable — the  second  author  wrote  the  Apemantus  sec- 
tion of  that  scene.     See  page  33. 


89 

he  should  execute  the  vengeance  on  the  senate.  We  have  not 
seen  the  senate  doing  Timon  any  harm,  and  only  casually  have 
we  heard  of  their  ingratitude  to  him;  yet  when  the  play  ends 
we  must  take  their  downfall  as  his  revenge.  We  therefore 
find  it  hard,  again,  to  think  that  Shakspere  did  not  mean  to 
display  their  thanklessness  more  fully  in  the  first  three  acts. 

The  first  three  acts :  that  is  just  the  point.  There  can  hardly 
be  a  criticism  as  to  the  completeness  of  the  last  two  acts  of 
Timon.  They  are  full ;  and  they  are  all  but  wholly  Shakspere's. 
Shakspere  began  to  lavish  his  resources  when  he  came  to 
Timon  in  misanthropy — clearly  his  main  interest  in  the  char- 
acter and  in  the  play.  Timon  the  misanthrope  therefore  as- 
sumes magnificent  proportions ;  Alcibiades  comes  into  his 
proper  function ;  and  the  plot  moves  on,  missing  no  step,  until 
the  end.  The  strange  thing  is  that  Shakspere  did  not  lay 
foundations  deep  enough — that  he  failed  to  give  full  expla- 
nations in  the  first  half  of  the  play  for  things  that  happen, 
properly  enough,  in  the  last  half.  When  Apemantus  comes  to 
visit  Timon  in  the  woods,  we  are  supposed"  to  know  a  good 
deal  about  Apemantus ;  yet  we  have^oJily  seen  him  for  a  little 
while  far  back  in  the  first  scene.  When  Alcibiades  shoulders 
Timon's  cause,  we  are  to  think  the  action  natural ;  yet  we  know 
little  reason  for  it,  having  hardly  had  a  chance  to  get  ac- 
quainted with  Alcibiades.  If  the  vengeance  executed  on  the 
senate  is  to  satisfy  us,  we  must  believe  the  senate  had  rejected 
Timon  when  he  went  off  to  the  woods ;  yet  we  have  only  had 
a  hint  or  two  of  their  ingratitude.  The  play,  in  brief,  is  top- 
heavy.  The  last  two  acts  stand  out  complete;  the  first  three 
will  not  hold  them  up.  To  be  more  accurate,  indeed,  there  are 
no  first  three;  for  Shakspere's  work  before  the  fourth  can- 
not be  well  stretched  into  three  acts. 

Such  is  the  first  impression  which  the  play  makes  on  one 
— doubtless  the  first  it  made  on  the  interpolator;  for  in  the 
earlier  acts  he  found  the  openings  for  almost  all  his  insertions. 
Everything  leads  to  a  suspicion  that  Shakspere  had  become  en- 
grossed with  the  misanthropy  of  Timon,  and  had  therefore 
written  out  the  last  half  of  the  play  in  full,  but  had  left  omis- 
sions in  the  first  half.     He  might  easily  have  gone  ahead  in 


DO 

sucli  a  numiKT.  lucatiiiii^  to  return  ami  lill  up  the  omissions 
when  convenient.  In  this  case  we  might  expect  the  scenes 
that  he  completeil  to  betray  at  least  some  hint  of  what  he 
meant  to  sliow  us  in  the  scenes  that  he  left  incomplete  or 
vacant :  and  our  task  is  now  to  gather  up  such  hints  as  we 
can  find,  and  see  what  they  will  tell  us.  In  so  doing  we  must 
be  very  careful  to  remember  one  thing  which  we  have  said 
already :  that  certain  features  which  the  play  appears  to  lack, 
as  an  amount  of  comedy,  are  little  more  than  stage-require- 
ments ;  and  that  while  Shakspere  may  very  well  have  meant  to 
furnish  them  in  actually  getting  the  play  ready  for  the  stage, 
their  absence  may  yet  cause  no  perceptible  omission  in  the 
plot  itself.  Of  these  we  cannot  speak  with  any  certainty.  We 
may  say  that  the  play  needs  them,  that  it  lacks  variety  without 
them ;  we  have  no  way  to  tell  how  Shakspere  may  have  planned 
to  furnish  them,  or  whether  he  so  planned  at  all.  But  with 
those  more  prominent  omissions  which  cause  breaches  in  the 
actual  plot,  which  interrupt  the  continuity  of  the  play,  we  may 
perhaps  deal  with  greater  confidence.  A  good  way  to  approach 
them  will  be  to  find  out  just  what  the  interpolator  was  attempt- 
ing in  the  plot  proper.  What  did  he  try  to  do  with  it?  What 
reason  was  there  for  his  doing  what  he  did,  or  doing  anything? 

In  the  banquet  scene  he  tried  only  to  enlarge  on  Shaksj>ere's 
exposition.  The  idea  was  not  a  bad  one ;  more  exposition, 
especially  if  some  beginnings  of  the  plot  were  filtered  through 
it,  would  be  admissible.  And  the  author  wanted  to  do  just 
the  right  things — to  display  the  generosity  of  Timon  in  more 
gifts,  to  warn  us  once  more  of  the  hero's  perilous  condition, 
to  show  the  sycophancy  of  his  friends,  and  to  touch  up  the 
characters  of  Alcibiades  and  Apemantus.  But  in  executing  all 
this  the  author  blundered  bewilderingly.  His  first  blunder — 
making  Ventidius  ofifer  to  repay  Timon — is  the  only  point  in 
the  scene  where,  inadvertently,  it  seems,  he  touched  the  plot. 
By  that  mistake,  as  we  have  seen,  he  cut  one  thread  of  it ;  and 
made  more  cutting  and  addition  necessary  later  on. 

He  next  inserted,  to  make  fun  and  again  to  bring  on  Ape- 
mantus, the  pure  clownage  added  to  the  dunning  scene.  Here 
he  left  the  plot  untouched;  only  he  ran  away  from  it  to  get  in 


91 

his  unknown  fool  and  page  with  letters  that  should  have 
a  bearing  on  the  plot  or  else  be  left  unmentioned.  Passing 
this  point,  he  began  to  suffer  for  his  mistreatment  of  Ventidius 
in  the  banquet  scene.  Shakspere  had  meant  Ventidius'  part  to 
end  in  his  denying  Timon ;  had  meant  the  scene  of  his  refusal 
to  be  the  climax  of  the  faithlessness  of  Timon's  friends;  and 
had  probably  written  that  scene  down.  The  second  author  had 
to  truncate  the  part  of  Ventidius ;  and  to  substitute  in  place 
of  the  scene — for  the  substitution  is  as  much  a  fact,  from  the 
viewpoint  of  the  plot,  if  Shakspere  only  planned  Ventidius' 
refusal  as  if  he  wrote  it  out — the  Sempronius  scene:  anti- 
climax in  the  place  of  climax.  So  the  interpolator's  first  deal- 
ing with  the  plot  ends  in  his  throwing  away  the  last  half  of 
the  one  thread  of  it  which  he  had  already  cut  in  two — in  sub- 
tracting from  the  plot,  not  adding  to  it. 

So  far,  indeed,  he  had  not  tried  to  add  to  it.  In  one  place 
he  had  touched  it  seemingly  by  accident,  and  in  another  he 
had  made  a  substitution  which  that  accident  necessitated.  But 
now  he  started  on  the  plot  in  earnest.  He  felt  some  gap  in  it 
between  the  scene  where  the  last  of  Timon's  friends  deserts 
him  and  the  scene  where  Timon  dupes  those  friends  at  his 
mock-banquet.  He  had  left  Timon  trusting  in  his  friends 
serenely  as  the  second  act  closed,  and  now  found  him  pouring 
curses  on  them  in  the  last  scene  of  the  third.  In  the  meantime, 
to  be  sure,  he  had  seen  three  of  them  turning  their  backs  on 
Timon — Lucius,  Lucullus,  and  Ventidius,  if  Shakspere  wrote 
the  third  refusal ;  Lucius,  Lucullus,  and  Sempronius,  as  the 
other  author  wrote  it.  But  Timon  himself  had  not  appeared; 
and  while  the  treachery  of  his  friends  might  seem  sufficient 
motive  for  Timon's  action,  the  interpolator  evidently  thought 
an  intermediate  step  in  the  development  of  Timon's  character 
should  be  shown  as  leading  to  that  action.  So  he  tried  to  give 
Timon  more  motive,  and  to  make  clear  the  step  in  his  develop- 
ment,— by  putting  in  the  repetitious  and  superfluous  dunning 
of  three  unknown  creditors  and  an  enigmatic  Lucius.  With 
their  help  he  gains  his  end ;  works  up  Timon  to  a  fury,  and 
hurries  him  on  to  the  mock-banc|uct.  The  end  may  not  have 
been  ill-advised.    Even  more  dunning  could  be  made  effective, 


92 

it  well  managed.  Timon's  fury  might  luit  bo  out  of  koii)ing, 
if  somewhat  more  articulate.  lUit  to  attain  the  end  by  bring- 
ing on  a  set  of  unknown  characters  was  to  make  a  breach 
wider  than  the  one — if  there  was  one — which  the  author  was 
Irving  to  fill.  His  first  attempt  at  real  addition  to  the  i)lot 
thus  ends  in  a  digression  from  it. 

At  his  busiest  now.  the  interpolator  found  and  tried  to  fdl 
another  breach.  He  had  left  Alcibiadcs  at  peace  with  every- 
body in  the  second  act ;  he  found  him  in  the  fourth  crusading 
against  Athens.  In  the  meantime,  to  be  sure,  he  probably  had 
seen  some  reason  for  the  crusade ;  he  had  read  in  the  mock- 
banquet,  we  presume,  that  Alcibiadcs  had  been  exiled  from 
Athens.^  But  he  felt,  and  rightly,  that  just  to  mention  the 
exile  was  not  enough ;  and  he  undertook  to  show  the  banish- 
ment and  motivate  the  crusade.  The  result  we  know.  He 
wrote  a  scene  in  which  he  forgot  Timon,  sought  out  an  un- 
known criminal  to  call  down  banishment  on  Alcibiadcs,  and 
so,  in  his  attempt  to  motivate  one  character,  broke  up  the  mo- 
tivation of  all  the  plot  remaining — a  scene  wdiich,  midw^ay  in 
the  play,  breaks  loose  from  every  thread  of  plot  preceding  it, 
and  twists  and  slackens  the  one  straight  thread  of  plot  that 
follows.  Once  more,  trying  to  fill  a  breach,  the  interpolator 
made  it  wider. 

The  attempt  to  fill  these  breaches  in  the  middle  of  the  third 
act  was  his  first  and  last  at  real  addition  to  the  plot.  There- 
after he  let  it  alone.  In  the  soliloquy  he  added  to  the  fare- 
wells of  the  servants  he  made  the  steward  resolve  to  do  only 
what  Shakspere  had  already  made  the  steward  do — follow  his 
master.  The  interpolation  in  the  scene  where  Apemantus 
visits  Timon  in  the  woods  is  nothing  but  pure  padding;  of 
course  the  characters  go  to  pieces  in  it,  but  no  element  of  plot 
is  added  or  subtracted.  The  additions  to  the  stew^ard's  visit 
do  not  change  the  action.  And  finally,  the  little  scene  at 
Timon's  grave  introduces  nothing  new.  We  have  said  nothing, 
in  this  summary,  of  most  of  the  interpolator's  blemishes.  His 
lame   style,   faulty   structure,   indistinct   and   vacillating  char- 

'  That  is,  unless  the  interpolator  himself  wrote  the  prose  of  the  mock- 
banquet.     See  page  45. 


93 

acterization,  his  minor  blunders,  inconsistencies,  and  contradic- 
tions— all  of  which  latter  will  be  found  between  two  scenes 
of  his,  or  between  one  of  his  and  one  of  Shakspere's — have 
been  considered  hitherto.  Here  we  are  keeping  to  the  one  aim 
of  finding  out  exactly  his  effect  upon  the  plot  itself.  We  have 
seen  that  he  had  reason  to  attempt  to  change  it  at  some  points ; 
we  must  give  him  credit  for  locating  some  of  the  omissions  in 
it  and  attempting  in  good  will  to  fill  them.  We  regret  only 
that  his  will  did  not  find  a  better  way. 

^'lost  of  the  time  he  missed  the  plot  entirely.  He  added  ex- 
position, put  in  clownage,  played  with  Apemantus,  made  the 
steward  bay  the  moon  about  his  master's  miseries, — sometimes 
doing  little  harm,  sometimes  much.  But  four  times  he  made 
changes  in  the  plot.  In  his  first  two  alterations  he  cut  oft'  the 
part  of  Ventidius,  made  one  for  Sempronius,  and  swept  away 
the  climax  of  the  scenes  that  motivate  Timon's  misanthropy.  In 
his  third — possibly  because  he  had  tampered  with  that  motiva- 
tion ?  * — he  undertook  to  fill  up  what  he  thought  a  breach  in 
the  development  of  Timon's  character ;  but  succeeded  ill  in  the 
attempt  and  effected  still  wider  breaches  in  the  play.  In  his 
fourth  he  tried  to  bridge  the  greater  gap  in  Alcibiades'  part ; 
but  ignored  what  plot  preceded  and  distorted  all  that  followed. 
Such  is  the  sum  total  of  his  dealings  with  the  plot.  Not  a 
thing  did  he  add  to  it.  In  one  case  he  subtracted  from  it,  in 
another  he  digressed  from  it,  in  a  third  he  split  it.  He  marred 
it  everywhere  he  touched  it. 

All  the  plot  is  Shakspere's ;  and  we  care  more  about  what 
Shakspere  did  than  about  what  the  other  author  may  have 
done  or  undone.  If  the  latter  did  sap  the  plot  at  the  very 
points  where  he  tried  to  add  to  it,  was  there  not  still  reason 
for  his  trying?  If  the  breaches  which  he  thought  to  fill  are 
even  better  than  the  filling,  are  they  not  breaches  still  ? 

In  the  first  two  acts — whatever  they  may  lack  of  fulness — 
the  actual  plot  as  Shakspere  wrote  it  is  continuous.  To  be 
sure,  the  extra  exposition  of  the  banquet  scene  might  not  hurt 
the  play,  if  well  done.     Some  of  it,  indeed,  would  help.     Shak- 

*  For  we  do  not  know  what   Shakspere  may  or  miglit  have  made   of  his 
Ventidius  scene. 


94 

spcre  may  himself  have  meant  to  write  the  scene — to  show  a 
Httle  more  of  N'entidius.  to  brinjj  out  Apcmantus,  to  intro(hice 
Lords  Lucius  and  Luculhis,  to  draw  the  tic  of  Alcihiades  to 
Timon  closer,  to  provide  spectacle  and  humor;  all  which 
things  the  interpolator  tried  and  bungled.  We  cannot  say 
that  Shakspere  meant  to  do  them.  We  can  say  that  even  had 
he  done  them,  they  would  not  have  much  affected  his  plot 
proper  at  this  point ;  for  without  them  it  is  continuous.  Upon 
the  exposition  of  Timon's  lavishncss  follows  the  mistrust  of  his 
creditors,  their  demands  for  payment,  Timon's  reckoning  with 
the  steward,  and  his  appeals  to  friends  for  help.  No  other 
element  of  plot,  apparently,  was  to  be  added  here.  Shak- 
spere's  second  scene  follows  his  first,  and  the  rest  of  his  two 
acts''  follows  the  second,  with  entire  continuity.  There  is  no 
breach  in  his  plot  before  the  third  act — none  before  the  third 
scene  of  that  act.  After  the  third  act  we  have  traced  his 
plot  and  found  it  whole;  only  thrown  out  of  gear  by  the  in- 
sertion of  the  banishment  of  Alcibiades  in  the  middle  of  that 
act.  There,  too,  we  found  the  only  place  where  the  inter- 
polator tried  consciously  to  fill  a  blank  in  Shakspere's  plot. 
In  this  place,  therefore,  we  must  look  for  the  lacuna  in  the 
plot. 

The  interpolator  tried  to  do  two  things  there,  and  he  should 
have  tried  to  do  two  more.  All  four,  at  one  place  or  another, 
we  have  mentioned.  The  interpolator  thought  that  the  de- 
fection of  three  friends  w^as  not  sufficient  motive  for  Timon's 
change  of  nature;  or  that  this  change  was  at  least  somewhat 
abrupt.  He  therefore  tried  to  give  Timon  more  motive,  and 
to  make  his  change  more  gradual,  by  putting  in  another  dun- 
ning scene.  But  the  breach  this  filled,  if  such  it  was,  was 
small  in  comparison  with  the  other  one  that  the  interpolator 
worked  on — the  gap  between  Alcibiades  at  peace  in  Athens 
and  Alcibiades  warring  against  Athens.  This  the  interpolator 
felt  compelled  to  bridge ;  bridged  it  thoughtlessly,  and  de- 
ranged the  whole  plot.     Still  more  needful  were  the  two  things 

*  Without  the  banquet,  of  course,  Shakspere's  work  would  not  make  two 
full  acts  ;  a  fact  which  may  incline  one  the  more  to  believe  that  Shakspere 
planned  to  insert  something  like  a  banquet  scene  himself. 


95 

which  he  should  have  done  but  did  not.  We  saw  in  the  last 
chapter  that  Shakspere  meant  Timon  for  a  public  benefactor 
who  should  suffer  from  the  senate's  cruelty ;  and  that  he  there- 
fore planned  the  ruin  of  the  state  as  a  great  part  of  the  revenge 
of  Timon.  But  Shakspere  said  just  enough  to  indicate  that 
such  was  his  plan ;  he  did  not  consummate  that  plan  by  empha- 
sizing Timon's  services  to  the  senate  and  by  demonstrating  its 
ingratitude  to  Timon.  It  was  not  enough  to  let  the  steward 
tell  how  the  senate  "  froze  him  into  silence  "  when  he  begged 
for  Timon.  But  if,  for  instance,  after  Timon's  private  friends 
had  played  him  false, — in  the  place  where  the  interpolator  felt 
he  must  put  in  some  more  dunning, — Shakspere  had  shown 
the  senate  casting  Timon  off:  one  lacuna  in  his  plot  would 
have  been  filled.  The  fourth  lacuna,  and  the  worst  of  all, 
would  have  remained.  Shakspere,  we  saw,  meant  Alcibiades 
to  be  the  natural  avenger  of  Timon ;  to  redress  his  own  wrongs, 
and  perhaps  to  have  wrongs  of  his  own,  but  incidentally. 
Such  an  end  Shakspere  kept  in  view  throughout  the  last  two 
acts.  Now  to  that  end,  to  make  those  acts  seem  reasonable, 
he  needed  to  create  some  strong  bond  between  Alcibiades  and 
Timon  in  the  first  half  of  the  play — to  show  there  some  con- 
vincing reason  why  Alcibiades,  if  he  was  to  avenge  himself 
but  incidentally,  should  avenge  Timon  at  all.  That  reason 
Shakspere  did  not  give  us.  He  made  Alcibiades  the  closest 
friend  that  Timon  has,  and  left  the  way  open  for  some  peculiar 
tie  between  the  two ;  but  he  did  not  perfect  that  tie.  The  in- 
terpolator was  blind  to  the  need  of  it.  He  saw  that  he  must 
give  Alcibiades  some  cause  to  fight ;  he  did  not  see  that  he 
must  make  him  fight  for  Timon.  So  forgetting  Timon,  he  had 
Alcibiades  banished  in  behalf  of  an  obscure  criminal,  made  him 
fight  in  his  own  cause,  and  split  the  play  in  two. 

Let  us  put  all  this  into  few  words.  Of  the  four  lacunae  in 
Shakspere's  plot  the  first  and  least  is  the  missing  step  in  the 
development  of  Timon's  character  between  the  scene  where 
his  last  friend  deserts  him  and  the  scene  in  which  he  turns  and 
tramples  on  his  friends — that  is,  in  the  middle  of  the  third 
act.  The  next  is  the  omission  of  a  scene  showing  the  senate's 
thanklessness  for  Timon's  benefactions ;  which  scene  would 


96 

have  to  be  placed  in  the  iiiicUlle  of  the  tliird  act.  The  third  is 
the  all  but  entire  breach  in  Alcibiades'  career  between  his 
peaceful  residence  in  the  city  and  his  crusade  against  Athens; 
a  breach  which  cannot  be  filled  anywhere  but  in  the  middle  of 
the  third  act.  The  fourth  is  the  failure  so  to  motivate  that  cru- 
sade as  to  leave  no  doubt  that  it  is  made  in  Timon's  cause. 
The  four  lacunae  come  at  one  spot.  The  plot  is  whole  up  to 
the  scene  where  Timon's  last  friend  turns  his  back;  after 
the  mock-banquet  it  is  whole  again.  Between  those  scenes 
the  four  lacunae  meet  and  make  one  large  lacuna.  This  is 
the  only  breach  in  Shakspere's  plot.  Filled  right,  it  would 
complete  the  plot ;  filled  wrong  by  the  interpolator,  it  makes 
the  plot  collapse  in  the  center. 

As  we  said  in  the  beginning,  all  this  is  strict  logic.  We 
are  figuring  on  what  the  plot  demands ;  beyond  its  bounds  we 
cannot  reason  safely.  Whatever  else  Shakspere  may  or  may 
not  have  meant  to  put  into  his  first  three  acts,  by  way  of 
lengthening  the  play,  rounding  out  the  characters,  meeting 
stage-requirements,  adding  variety,  spectacle,  comic  relief,  may 
be  matter  of  opinion.  For  such  purposes  he  may  well  have 
planned  to  furnish  many  features  in  this  play,  as  he  did  in 
others,  which  would  not  increase  the  substance  of  the  actual 
plot  or  turn  its  course  perceptibly ;  the  absence  of  which,  there- 
fore, leaves  little  or  no  mark  upon  the  plot  itself.  Such 
potential  features  must  remain  beyond  our  ken.  But  the  one 
breach  in  the  plot  is  a  sure  fact.  That  Shakspere  did  not  see 
it  is  hardly  possible.  Perhaps  he  filled  it  up  w^ith  scenes  now 
lost.  Far  more  probably  he  simply  left  it  blank,  knowing  how 
he  would  fill  it  when  he  had  thundered  through  the  last  two 
acts,  which  interested  him  more.  If  so,  we  wonder  why  he 
did  not  come  back  to  it,  and  how  he  would  have  filled  it  if  he 
had  returned  to  it;  but  w^e  have  no  way  of  answering  either 
question.  One  scene  might  have  filled  the  gap — might  have 
laid  bare  the  senate's  cruelty  to  Timon,  given  Alcibiades  a 
cause  to  go  to  arms,  and  based  that  cause  on  his  friendship 
for  Timon.  The  interpolator  need  only  have  made  Alcibiades 
provoke  the  senate  to  his  banishment  by  pleading,  not  for 
mercy  on  an  unknown  criminal,  but  for  aid  to  Timon — for 


97 

repayment  of  the  fortune  Timon  spent  to  save  the  senate  and 
the  state  from  ruin.  So  we  should  have  Timon  cast  off  by  the 
senate,  and  Alcibiades  banished  in  Timon's  cause ;  and  what- 
ever else  the  play  might  lack,  its  plot  would  be  continuous  from 
end  to  end.  Perhaps  it  would  be  hard  to  find  an  easier  way 
to  splice  the  different  threads  of  plot  at  the  point  where  they 
break.  But  we  need  not  dwell  upon  this  way.  It  was  not 
Shakspere's.  Else  his  Alcibiades,  when  he  meets  Timon  in 
the  woods,  would  know  more  of  the  latter's  fortunes ;  would 
have  more  than  heard  how  "  cursed  Athens  "  had  been  mind- 
less of  Timon's  worth."  How  Shakspere  did  intend  to  fill  the 
breach  we  do  not  know.  Perhaps  he  had  a  better  way ;  but 
he  left  us  no  clue  to  it.  We  do  know  that  the  plot  is  other- 
wise continuous,  and  therefore  we  presume  that  it  is  otherwise 
complete  as  Shakspere  planned  it. 

At  this  point  one  naturally  wonders  whether  Shakspere 
could  have  countenanced  the  additions  to  the  play,  or  have 
been  aware  of  them;  and  the  attempt  to  answer  brings  up 
certain  final  questions  on  which  the  answer  would  more  or 
less  depend.  What  was  the  date  of  Shakspere's  Timon,  and 
the  date  of  the  interpolations?  Were  the  latter  written  for 
stage-purposes?  Was  the  play,  with  or  without  them,  acted? 
Who,   finally,   was  the  interpolator? 

In  practical  agreement  critics  now  date  Shakspere's  work 
in  Timon  about  1607-8.  The  date  is  estimated  from  the 
general  technical  resemblance  of  his  verse  in  this  play  to  the 
verse  of  his  other  later  tragedies;  from  the  fact  that  he  may 
well  have  thought  of  Timon  for  a  hero  first  when  reading  the 
excursus  on  the  misanthrope  in  Plutarch's  Antoniiis,  which 
was  used  for  Antony  and  Cleopatra  (1607-8)  ;  and  from  the 
likeness  in  the  plot  and  sentiment  and  title-character  of  Timon 
to  those  of  Lear  and  Coriolanus  especially.  The  evidence  is 
not  enough  to  fix  the  exact  year;  but  the  estimated  date  can 
hardly  be  far  wrong.  For  the  date  of  the  interpolations  we 
have  no  evidence  whatever  except  the  knowledge  that  ihcy  had 
been  written  by  1623.     There  has  been  a  theory,  none  too  well 

9 IV,  iii,  92. 


98 

creilitetl.  that  tlu-v  were  written  in  that  very  \\-:\v :  not  for 
stage-purposes,  hut  to  cnlari,'o  the  phiy  for  puhheation  in  the 
Foho.  "  IioUl  oven  to  iniinulenee,"  in  the  confession  oi  its 
father,  Mr.  IMeay."  that  theory  rested  solely  on  certain  stranj^e 
irrei^ularities  in  the  paj^ination  of  the  Folio  Tiinon.  It  has 
receiuly  lost  even  that  sujijiort.  In  an  article  which  seems  to 
say  the  last  wonl  as  to  those  irregularities.  Mr.  Josiah  Quincy 
Adams''  has  demonstrated  that  they  have  no  bearing  on  the 
authorship  or  date  or  purpose  of  the  interi)o!ations  in  the  play. 
Mr.  Atlams  therefore  leaves  us  no  more  reason  to  believe  that 
Tiinon  was  enlarged  for  printing  in  the  Folio — never  the  most 
natural  theory — than  we  should  have  in  case  its  paging  there 
were  entirely  regular ;  in  which  case  the  theory  would  hardly 
have  been  thought  of. 

We  are  therefore  free  for  the  more  natural  theory  that  the 
interpolator  wrote  for  the  stage.  For  this  there  is  some  evi- 
dence. Time  and  again  that  writer  seems  to  have  the  stage  in 
mind.     His  first  scene  is  elaborate  spectacle : 

'  Verplanck  hinted  at  the  theory,  but  Mr.  Fleay  first  argued  it. 

*  Journal  of  English  and  Germanic  Philology,  January,  1908.  The  gist 
of  the  argument  may  be  given.  The  pagination  of  the  Folio  shows  that 
Timon  occupies  twenty  of  the  thirty  pages,  following  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
which  the  editors  first  intended  to  fill  with  Troilus  and  Crcssida.  (The 
opening  page-numbers  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  are  consecutive  with  the 
closing  ones  of  Romeo  and  Juliet ;  into  two  copies  of  the  Folio  a  stray  leaf 
has  crept,  bearing  the  last  page  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  on  its  recto  and  the 
first  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  on  its  verso ;  and  other  phenomena  betray  the 
fact.)  But  before  the  Folio  was  published,  the  editors  moved  Troilus  and 
Cressida  to  a  place  in  front  of  all  the  other  tragedies.  So  much  Mr.  Adams, 
slightly  correcting  Mr.  Sidney  Lee,  proves  at  the  start.  Now  Mr.  Fleay 
had  argued  that  when  the  editors  saw  that  Timon  would  not  fill  the  space 
left  blank  by  the  removal  of  Troilus,  they  gave  Timon  to  some  writer  with 
instructions  to  "  make  it  up  to  thirty  pages."  Even  supposing  the  worst 
of  the  editors,  Mr.  Fleay  is  silent  about  the  fact  that  their  hireling  made 
it  up  to  only  twenty  pages.  But  Mr.  Adams  shows  that  the  only  trouble 
of  the  editors  was  some  hitch  in  printing  Troilus;  that,  once  decided  on 
removing  that  play,  they  presumably  found  Timon  ready  at  hand  to  take 
the  vacant  place ;  and  that  Timon  filled,  with  one  page  for  the  actors'  names 
and  one  page  blank,  all  the  space  left  vacant  by  the  removal  of  the  other 
play  except  one  quire — which  was  easily  left  out. 


99 

"Hautboys  playing  loud  music.  A  great  banquet  served  in;  and  then 
enter  Lord  Timon,  the  States,  the  Athenian  Lords,  Ventidius,  which  Timon 
redeemed  from  prison.  Then  comes,  dropping  after  all,  Apemantus,  dis- 
contentedly,   like    himself."  I,    ii. 

In  that  day  such  stage-directions  were  not  written  for  a 
reader's  benefit.  And  are  we  to  suppose  that  the  interpolator 
devised  a  masque  of  Amazons, — to  mention  but  one  feature  of 
the  spectacle, — brought  them  in  "  with  lutes  in  their  hands, 
dancing  and  playing,"  dressed  up  a  Cupid  to  precede  them, 
wrote  another  stage-direction  for  the  lords,  speaking  no  word, 
to  rise  from  table  and  dance  with  them, — that  he  contrived 
all  this  pure  show  only  to  be  read  about,  or  to  be  seen?  It  is 
nothing  to  read — a  few  halting  lines,  and  a  soliloquy  by  Ape- 
mantus which  must  be  spoken  during  the  dance.  It  is  all 
spectacle.  Surely  the  author  would  not  go  to  so  much  trouble 
to  invent  a  dance  that  was  to  be  danced  only  in  the  mind's  eye 
of  a  reader.  Nor  does  it  seem  for  a  reader's  benefit  that  in 
his  next  insertion  he  recalled  the  duns  whom  Shakspere  had 
sent  off  the  stage,  to  do  clownage  with  Apemantus  and  the  page 
and  fool;  that  later  for  more  clownage  he  broke  in  on  Shak- 
spere's  scene  between  Timon  and  Apemantus.  He  seems  to 
have  been  thinking  of  his  groundlings.  Another  time  his 
thought  is  of  his  actors.  "  Enter  three  senators,"  he  says  to 
start  the  banishment  scene,  "  at  one  door."  ]\Ien  have  been 
hanged  on  less  evidence  than  that  door  affords.  For  whom 
but  the  actors  would  he  mention  it?  In  every  scene  he  strove 
for  stage-effect ;  outside  the  two  in  which  he  tried  to  fill  the 
one  breach  in  the  plot,  he  added  little  but  buffoonery  and  spec- 
tacle. Apparently  he  kept  his  eye  too  much  upon  his  audience, 
and  not  enough  upon  the  play ;  for  he  fell  into  most  of  his 
minor  blunders  when  trying  to  make  hits. 

All  these  facts  endorse  the  natural  theory  that  he  wrote  for 
the  stage;  and  though  they  do  not  prove  that  his  play  was 
acted,  they  at  least  incline  one  to  believe  so.  The  play,  as 
Shakspere's,  had  credentials  for  the  stage  already;  and  we 
should  think  that  the  man  who  patched  it  up  with  plain  intent 
to  fit  it  more  completely  for  the  theater  was  getting  ready  for 
an  actual  presentation.     None  is,  of  course,  recorded.     Dr. 


100 

Brinslcy  Xicholson."  howovor.  found  in  certain  advance  stage- 
directions — entrances  indicated,  seeniins^ly  as  actors'  cues,  from 
two  to  fourteen  lines  before  the  actual  entrance  of  the  charac- 
ters concerned — what  he  thought  a  "  tolerably  decisive  proof  " 
that  Tinton  came  into  the  hands  of  actors  who  performed  it. 
If  so.  they  presented  it  in  the  interpolator's  form;  for  the 
clearest  evidence  is  found  in  his  banquet  scene.  There,  in  the 
miilst  of  dialogue,  appears  this  stage-direction:  "Sound  tucket; 
cuter  the  tuasqucrs  of  Amazons,  icitli  lutes  in  their  luDids,  danc- 
ing and  playing."  But  the  masquers  do  not  then  enter.  Hear- 
ing the  tucket,  Timon  asks,  "  What  means  that  trump?"  Only 
a  servant  comes  to  answer  that  certain  ladies  arc  "  desirous  of 
admittance."  Then  Timon  asks  their  purpose,  and  the  servant 
says  that  a  fore-runner  comes  with  them  to  signify  it.  After 
six  lines  Timon  bids  them  be  admitted,  and  another  stage- 
direction  seems  to  bring  them  in:  "Enter  Cupid,  with  the 
masque  of  ladies."  But  Cupid  speaks  a  second  six  lines ;  and 
the  ladies  seem  really  to  enter  only  when  he  concludes  and 
Timon  again  says,  "  Let  'em  have  kind  admittance ;  music  make 
their  welcome !  "  The  episode  reads  smoothly ;  only  the  first 
stage-direction  prompts  the  entrance  of  the  ladies  fourteen  lines 
ahead  of  time.  The  natural  explanation  is  that  the  author 
wrote  the  last  stage-direction  only,  making  the  ladies  enter 
with  or  after  Cupid ;  that  the  first  direction,  getting  them  ready 
for  that  entrance,  is  the  work  of  actors.^" 

We  find  it  all  but  certain,  then,  that  the  interpolator  wrote 
for  the  theater,  and  very  likely  that  his  play  was  performed. 
Whether  it  had  been  tried  before,  in  Shakspere's  form,  is 
questionable.  W^e  cannot  tell  at  what  date  it  was  played,  if 
any;  whether  before  Shakspere's  death,  whether  with  his 
knowledge  or  without,  we  do  not  know.  One  feels  fairly 
sure  it  was  without  his  supervision.  He  might  have  passed 
poor  work,  might  have  left  loopholes  in  his  plot  with  sug- 
gestions for  another  man  to  fill  them;  but  he  would  hardly 
have  consented  to  their  being  filled  in  such  a  way  as  to  wreck 
the  plot  which  he  had  almost  finished.    We  should  like  to  think 

*  New  Shakspere  Society  Transactions,  1874,  page  252,  note  2. 
"See  also  I,  i,  173;  III,  vi,  44. 


101 

the  work  was  done  without  his  knowledge;  but  evidence  is 
silent. 

Probably  the  name  of  the  interpolator  will  remain  unknown. 
The  guesses  that  have  been  made  at  him  have  been  supported 
by  so  little  evidence  that  none  of  them  has  ever  been  entirely 
accepted,  or  even  seriously  considered  frequently,  by  other 
critics  than  the  guesser.  Delius  found  some  reason  to  believe 
that  George  Wilkins  had  a  share  in  Pericles,  and  thereupon 
he  argued  the  non  scquitur  that  Wilkins  wrote  the  spurious 
parts  of  Timon — an  opinion  which  has  little  other  evidence  to 
support  it.  The  argument  on  Pericles  perhaps  deserves  to  be 
reviewed  with  care ;  but  probably  the  nearer  a  reviewer  comes 
to  thinking  that  George  Wilkins  wrote  the  regular  though 
wooden  verse  of  the  first  two  acts  of  Pericles,  the  farther  he 
will  be  from  a  belief  that  the  same  man  wrote  the  highly  irreg- 
ular verse  of  the  interpolations  in  Timon.  On  slight  and  ques- 
tionable evidence  of  verse-technic,  Mr.  Fleay  argued  that  Cyril 
Tourneur  was  responsible  for  the  interpolations — having 
written  them,  of  course,  to  fit  the  play  for  publication  in  the 
Folio.  But  this  theory,  perhaps  the  slenderest  that  Mr.  Fleay 
put  forth  on  Timon,  was  too  weak  to  gain  much  credence. 
Unless  more  evidence  should  be  forthcoming,  we  have  only 
one  clue  by  which  possibly  to  trace  the  interpolator — his  very 
peculiar  technic.  This  might  be  a  good  clue  if  we  could  find 
a  chance  to  use  it;  if  verse  could  be  discovered  elsewhere  very 
like  the  spurious  verse  in  Timon,  we  might  gain  at  least  a 
probability  as  to  the  personage  of  the  interpolator.  The  hard 
thing  has  been  to  locate  any  verse  so  similar  as  to  raise  a  strong 
suspicion.  We  should  be  gratified  if  we  could  put  a  finger  on 
the  man  who  touched  pens  with  Shakspere  in  the  play;  but  it 
is  not  likely  we  shall  ever  do  so. 

Some  things  about  the  play  are  therefore  left  in  question; 
it  is  hoped  that  the  main  problems  have  been  somewhat  clari- 
fied. Unless  our  reasoning  is  wrong,  the  singularities  and 
inconsistences  we  noted  in  the  play  when  starting  are  the 
product  of  some  man  of  small  ability,  writing  probably  in 
haste,  and  seemingly  without  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
play  he  was  augmenting,  or  at  least  without  good  judgment 


101> 

of  its  nccils.  l^nless  some  (locuincnt  is  lost,  wo  know  the 
sources  that  had  served  that  play.  I'lilcss  \vc  have  unwar- 
rantably stretched  the  eviilence,  wi-  can  now  diviik-  the  play 
between  its  authors  with  considerable  accuracy.  Unless  the 
author  who  cut  down  \'entidius'  part  was  i)rior  to  the  one 
who  built  it  up;  unless  the  author  who  inserted  the  one  line 
which  seemingly  makes  prose  of  a  verse  passage  wrote  before 
the  author  who  composed  that  passage  in  blank  verse;  unless 
the  man  who  tried  to  fill  a  gap  in  Alcibiades'  part  foreran  the 
man  who  planned  the  part  and  left  the  gap;  unless  the  writer 
who  used  no  source  antedated  the  writer  who  used  all  the 
sources  he  could  find ;  unless  the  autiior  who  continually 
borrowed  from  the  other  nevertheless  preceded  him;  unless 
the  author  who  is  quite  oblivious  of  the  other  nevertheless 
followed  him ; — unless  what  seems  impossible  is  true,  Shak- 
spere  was  the  first  writer  to  touch  the  play.  We  may  wish 
that  he  had  finished  it,  that  we  could  know  more  fully  how  he 
planned  to  finish  it;  but  possibly  some  outlines  of  his  plan  are 
clearer. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I.     THE  TIMON  LEGEND 

Coopman,  Ludovicus.     Dissertatio  de  Timone  Misanthrope,  Utrecht,  1841. 
Binder,  A.     Uber  Timon   den  Misanthropen,   in   the   Ulmer  Schulprogram, 

18SS-6. 
Piccolomini,  Emanuele.     Sulla  leggenda  di  Timone  il  Misantropo,  in  the 

Studi  di  filologia  greca.     Torino,   1882,  I,  3. 
L'Abbe  de  Resnel.     Recherches  sur  Timon  le  Misantrope,  in  the  Histoire 

de  I'Academie  des  Inscriptions,  tome   XIV   {Memoires  de  Litterature, 

page  74). 
Bertram,  Franz.     Die  Timonlegende  in  der  antiken  Literatur.     Heidelberg 
Dissertation,  1906. 

n.     THE   SOURCES   AND   AUTHORSHIP   OF   TIMON  OF  ATHENS 

The  larger  part  of  the  bibliography  on  these  subjects  is  comprised  in 
the  prefaces  and  notes  of  the  various  editors  of  the  play.  For  comment 
on  the  problems  in  Timon  the  most  important  editions  are  those  of 
Malone,  Knight,  Verplanck,  Staunton,  Dyce,  Delius,  Clark  and  Wright, 
Hudson,  Rolfe,  Furnivall  (the  Leopold),  Herford  (the  Eversley),  Evans 
(the  Henry  Irving'),  Deighton  (the  Arden),  and  Gollancz  (the  Temple). 
Similar  material  is  treated  in  histories  of  the  drama,  such  as  Ward's 
History  of  English  Dramatic  Literature,  Klein's  Geschichte  des  Dramas, 
and  Professor  Schelling's  Elizabethan  Drama;  and  in  lives  of  Shakspere, 
such  as  Mr.  Sidney  Lee's.     The  extensive  treatises  are: 

(i)     On  the  Sources 

Miiller,  Adolf.  Uber  die  Quellen  aus  denen  Shakespeare  Timon  von  Athen 
entnommen  hat.     Jena  Dissertation,   1873. 

Clemons,  W.  H.  The  Sources  of  Timon  of  Athens,  in  the  Princeton  Uni- 
versity Bulletin,  vol.  XV. 

(2)     On  the  Authorship 

Knight,  Charles.     Preface  to  Timon  in  the  Pictorial  Edition,   1838. 
Verplanck,  G.  C.     Preface  to  Timon  in  Shakespeare's  Plays,  1847. 
Delius,  Nikolaus.     Uber  Shakespeare's  Timon  of  Athens,  in  the  lahrbuch 

der  dcutschen  Shakespeare  Gesellschaft,  vol.  H. 
Delius,  Nikolaus.     Uber  Shakespeare's  Pericles,  in  the  lahrbuch,  vol.  IH. 
Tschischwitz,   Benno.     Timon   von   Athen,   ein   Kritische    Versuch,   in   the 

lahrbuch,  vol.  IV. 

103 


104 

Fleay,  F.  G.  On  the  Authorship  of  Timon  of  Athens,  foUowiil  by  an 
edition  of  The  Life  of  Timon  of  Athens,  "  the  usual  insertions  by 
another  hand  in  the  play  l>einK  left  out ;  "  in  the  Transactions  of  the 
.V»-tf  Shaksfere  Society.   1874. 

Kullmann,  Georg.  Shakespeare's  Antheit  an  dem  unter  scinem  Namcn 
leroffcnihchlen  Trauerspiele  Timon,  in  the  Archiv  fiir  Lilcratur- 
geschichte.  vol.  XI. 

Wendlandt,  Wilhelm.  Shakespeare's  Timon  von  Athcn.  in  the  Shake- 
speare Jahtbuch.   vol.   XXIII. 

Adams,  Josiah  Quincy.  Timon  of  Athens  and  the  Irregularities  «n  the 
I'irst  I'olto,  in  the  Journal  of  English  and  Germanic  Philology,  January, 
1908. 


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